Evergreen Line is revamping several of its intra-Asian services in November to meet the growth of that trade caused by the free trade agreement between China and the 12 countries belonging to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Evergreen said it will realign its fleet deployment in November and launch two new services that will replace the existing Japan- Taiwan - South China Sea (JTS) service. The new South China Sea - Hong Kong (SCH) loop will serve the southern leg of JTS service while the northern leg will be covered by the carrier's existing service network.

One ship released from JTS's reshuffle will be deployed in its new Taiwan - China - Indonesia (TCI) service, which is jointly operated and dubbed as TPI service by Wan Hai Lines.

Evergreen said the ASEAN free trade agreement with China has significantly boosted the bilateral trade. Among ASEAN members, Indonesia and Vietnam gained higher trade growth with China than others.

For the first nine months of this year, the statistics of China Customs show that the trade amount between Indonesia and China surged by 43.1 percent from the same period last year, while Vietnam's increased by 38.6 percent.

The SCH weekly service will deploy one C-type vessel with a capacity of 1,038 TEUs on the following port rotation: Hong Kong, Haiphong, Zhanjiang and back to Hong Kong.

Evergreen will deploy one 1 P-type vessel of 1,618 20-foot equivalent units and Wan Hai will deploy two other ships on the weekly TCI service, with the following port rotation: Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung, Hong Kong, Shekou, Jakarta, Semarang, Surabaya and back to Taipei.

The Journal of Commerce Online