In September 2020, just over a year after the first cargo left on the Maersk AE19 service, the combined ocean-rail product has become a permanent weekly service.
The service provides a combination of a short-sea and intercontinental rail products, which connects several sources in Asia with ports in Northern Europe.
The AE19 service complements Maersk’s regular Asia-Europe product offering based on conventional ocean services and offers highly competitive transit times from Asia to major ports in Europe, the company said in a statement.
Q&A: Kasper Krog, Head of Intercontinental Rail, A.P Moller-Maersk
The service is based on a short-sea connection between Asian origin ports in Korea, Japan or China and the port of Nakhodka in the Russian Far East (operated by Sealand Asia – A Maersk Company), followed by an intercontinental rail connection across Russia from Nakhodka to St. Petersburg, which takes 11 days.
The last leg of the product is another short-sea connection between St. Petersburg and ports in Finland (Helsinki and Rauma), continental Europe, such as Gdansk (Poland), Bremerhaven (Germany), or Scandinavia, operated by Sealand Europe.
“We are delighted that this unique product, designed for our customers in both Asia and Europe, formally becomes a weekly service and gets a permanent place in our product portfolio”, comments Zsolt Katona, Managing Director, Eastern Europe at Maersk. “This has been possible thanks to increased interest from our customers, who appreciate its attractive transit times and cost competitiveness.”
