Login

<- NEWS
CMA CGM quietly drops Rotterdam from Transatlantic Unity Bridge, is reduced reliability the cause?
2025-03-19 08:51

CMA CGM quietly drops Rotterdam from Transatlantic Unity Bridge, is reduced reliability the cause?

by Destine Ozuygur •
CMA CGM quietly drops Rotterdam from Transatlantic Unity Bridge, is reduced reliability the cause?

eeSea analysts have recently confirmed that Rotterdam has been dropped from long-term vessel schedules on CMA CGM’s Northern Europe to North America service, the Unity Bridge. The weekly service hosting an average 6.5K TEU vessel capacity is part of the carrier’s newly rolled out 2025 Transatlantic network, with Version 1 having barely begun a month ago on February 14.

Version 2, which will see the Rotterdam call dropped and not replaced, began phasing in on March 07 with the handover expected to be complete by the first week of April. The service was already quite direct compared to most of its Northern Europe - North America peers but the reduction of 6 to 5 calls will not have an impact on the advertised total roundtrip duration of 35 days. The new rotation will be: Le Havre - Antwerp - Bremerhaven - Charleston - Savannah. The 3.5K TEU CMA - SL1 service, aka the ‘Saint Laurent’, is an equally condensed rotation of just 5 calls: Bremerhaven - Rotterdam - Antwerp - Montreal - Halifax.

In the absence of a formal advisory, it's possible to speculate that the carrier is dropping Rotterdam due to persistent delays and extended berth stays at the port, specifically at the ECT Delta Terminal. While Hucthison’s Delta II Terminal has been more prominently featured in the news since February due to repeat strike actions, ECT Delta has seen quite a few omissions and borne the burden of major delays in the past few months. On time performance at the terminal has remained below 30% since December 2024 and average delays have plummeted to -4.8 days since the start of the year. January saw a loss of -232K TEU of expected capacity, with 23 of the 38 lost calls being due to direct omissions. February saw an additional 19 omissions but just -41K TEU loss in expected vs. actual capacity delivered due to delayed arrivals from January filling in some of the capacity gaps created by the ongoing Far East - Europe alliance transitions.

In a similar move, OCEAN alliance has begun to exclude Busan and Rotterdam from the NEU4’s Far East - Northern Europe rotation beginning with Version 22 on March 10. Rotterdam will be replaced as the last load port out of Europe with a second Southampton call. Despite these developments, there is no cause to be uniquely alarmed: CMA CGM will still continue to utilize Rotterdam on 5 of its 6 Transatlantic offerings, highlighting the enduring confidence in this key Northern European hub.

If you’d like to dive deeper into any of these discussions, or conduct your own analysis with the best of our data solutions, please feel free to reach out to our team at ops@eesea.com.

eeSea Signals