The Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has included Port Houston in its new Santana trans-Pacific service.
The service links Vietnam and Central China to the US Gulf and East Coast, Port Houston will be the first port call in the US. This also marks the second Vietnam direct call to the port.
The full rotation of the Santana trans-Pacific service is as follows: Haiphong (Vietnam) – Shanghai (China) – Ningbo (China) – Houston (US) – Charleston (US) – New York (US) – Haiphong.
Transit time between Vietnam and Houston will take around 31 days.
“MSC is a long-running, valued partner for us and MSC’s new service provides much-needed capacity in the trans-Pacific trade for Port Houston’s growing list of beneficial cargo owner customers,” said Roger Guenther, Executive Director of Port Houston. “MSC’s Santana service links Houston directly with Vietnam, an important and fast-growing market for our region.”
The first vessel on this service called at Haiphong on 31 December 2021 and is set to call at Port Houston’s Bayport Container Terminal in the coming weeks.
Growth in imports from Asia has contributed greatly to rising cargo numbers at the port in 2021. For nine consecutive months in the year, Houston saw double-digit growth and in November surpassed the three million TEU mark. Elevated levels of cargo are expected to continue well into 2022.
Port Houston also demonstrated improvements in nearly every category of the Goods Movement Emissions Inventory (GMEI) which updated emissions data from 2013 to 2019.
The data showed that the public terminal’s emissions were lowered by between 15% and 93% for all evaluated pollutants across the board in 2019 compared to 2013.
The lowered emissions may be partially due to the increased use of hybrid-electric rubber-tyred gantry (RTG) cranes, highlighted by Guenther. The yard now utilises 31 RTGs which reduce emissions by up to 70% to 90% over older diesel models.
