The 8,888 TEU OOCL Tianjin has become the first ship from the Ocean Alliance to call at Eurogate Container Terminal Wilhelmshaven.

“This is a special day for us – the day that Ocean Alliance is calling at port for the very first time in Wilhelmshaven,” said Jan Schmahl, managing director of North Europe at Orient Overseas Container Line Ltd. “Within the scope of our new, strong alliance, we can now offer our customers in northern Europe a service from Wilhelmshaven which provides the fastest transit times to the Far East as well as an alternative gateway to Germany. Since the announcement of our decision to include Wilhelmshaven in the schedule of our LL1 service, we have experienced only positive responses. This encouragement is great to receive and strengthens us in our decision. A heartfelt thanks goes out to our customers and our service providers for their support, which has enabled us to have such a successful start of this new service.”

According to Eurogate, the Asia-North Europe 1 service is the Ocean Alliance’s largest and will soon deploy 11 of the world’s largest container ships, including six 22,000 TEU newbuildings from OOCL  and the 19,000 TEU CSCL Globe. The 21,100 TEU OOCL Hong Kong, currently the world’s largest, is scheduled to call at Wilhelmshaven on July 1, 2017 during its maiden voyage.

“We’re delighted that we were able to convince the four Ocean Alliance shipping companies of Wilhelmshaven’s nautical advantages,” said Michael Blach, chairman of the Eurogate Group management board. “All in all, we now have eight shipping companies calling at Wilhelmshaven as part of their schedules. This also results in new offers for logistics service providers and rail transport operators, which are making the container port more and more attractive every day for the shipping industry. We are very happy about this and are looking to the future with high expectations.”

In anticipation of the arrival of the Ocean Alliance, several railway operators are adding rail connections to and from Wilhelmshaven, including Eurogate Intermodal, Transfracht, Duisport, Necoss, Roland Spedition and Roland Umschlag with LOCON, according to Eurogate.