NEWS | Wednesday, 26 March 2008

M.V. Hatta’s maiden call at Malta Freeport

M.V. ‘Hatta’, United Arab Shipping Company (UASC)’s high-speed vessel with a capacity of 6,919 TEUs called at Malta Freeport last Thursday. This vessel has a service speed of over 25 knots, thereby improving significantly the transit times between ports of call.
UASC signed a contract for the building of eight new generation vessels in 2005 and M.V. ‘Hatta’, delivered on 19 February 2008, is the second vessel of this type joining the M.V. ‘Al Safat’ deployed in the Asia-Europe Container service.
This is the first European call for the M.V. ‘Hatta’, which will be deployed as part of the AEC service but it is planned that it will then be shifted to the Interim and AEC2 Service.
The AEC service, which started calling at Malta last January has the following port rotation: Malta Freeport – Rotterdam – Thamesport –Hamburg – Antwerp – Yokohama – Nagoya – Kobe – Hakata – Pusan – Kaoshiung – Yantian – Hong Kong – Singapore – Khor Fakkan – Jebel Ali – Jeddah.
Presently, Malta Freeport has connections with over 128 ports world-wide, 60 of which are throughout Europe, North Africa, the Black Sea and the Middle East.
UASC’s existing fleet consists of 35 owned and chartered vessels whilst UASC’s container fleet is currently in the region of 200,000 TEU capacity.