MOL Announces Revised Asia- West Mediterranean/ North-Europe Service

December 12, 2008

Tokyo, 12 December 2008 - Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL; President: Akimitsu Ashida) today announced changes to their Asia-West Mediterranean service and Asia-North Europe services.

From 23 December 2008, The New World Alliance (TNWA) carriers - Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL), APL, and Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) - will start the revised "MED" service, which will include the Grand Alliance (GA) lines - Hapag-Lloyd, MISC Berhad, Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK), and Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL).
The new service will deploy eight 6,000 TEU-capacity ships with TNWA and GA providing two and six vessels, respectively.
The "MED" service will make new calls at Jeddah, Pusan, Shekou and Valencia. The revised port rotation is Pusan, Shanghai, Ningbo, Chiwan, Shekou, Hong Kong, Singapore, Port Kelang, Jeddah, Damietta, Genoa, Fos, Barcelona, Valencia, Damietta, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Pusan.
The service changes will allow MOL and other partners to maintain the service quality, providing better port coverage for customers.

For Asia-North Europe Services, MOL announced revision to their "JEX" service and "SCX" service.
"JEX" service has changed the rotation between Yantian and Hong Kong in Eastbound voyage from December 2008, and will start Jeddah calling from 15 January 2009.The revised port rotation is Kobe, Nagoya, Shimizu, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Yantian, Singapore, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Le Havre, Jeddah, Singapore, Yantian, Hong Kong, and Kobe. This new rotation will provide customers a direct access from Middle-East to Japan and the fastest transit from Hong Kong to Kobe.

Since 3 November 2008, a new deployment schedule has been implemented for China - Europe service, merging "CEX" service into "SCX" service. The revised port rotation is Ningbo, Shanghai, Xiamen, Hong Kong, Chiwan, Singapore, Colombo, Southampton, Zeebrugge, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Salalah, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Ningbo.
This new "SCX" allows MOL to maintain our customer service standards and quality. Colombo is added to ports in Asia and the first calling port in Europe will be Southampton instead of Thamesport. Ports previously linked by CEX are now covered by other TNWA services, for example, Yantian by JEX, Thamesport by AEX or Antwerp by LP2.