TS Lines reenters transpacific trades

Taiwan’s TS Lines is reentering the transpacific trades for the third time, one of a raft of smaller carriers tempted by today’s sky-high freight rate environment. 

Alphaliner is reporting the carrier will deploy a couple of extra loaders to the US west coast later this month before establishing a vessel-sharing agreement with Singapore’s SeaLead Shipping on a service between China, South Korea and Long Beach. SeaLead will operate four ships and TS Lines two vessels on the service – all ships being sub-3,000 teu in size. 

The last time TS Lines had vessels crossing the Pacific was during the pandemic era, but it pulled the offering in early 2023 as rates fell. 

The return of a high freight rate environment this year has caused a sharp increase in the share of non-alliance capacity on ex-Asia trades to the US west coast and North Europe, but not to US east coast and the Mediterranean, according to analysis by Denmark’s Sea-Intelligence who is forecasting a further sharp increase in the capacity share for non-alliance services to the US west coast in the coming months.