At the Xeneta Summit in Amsterdam, leaders from Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk showcased their strong commitment to the forthcoming Gemini Cooperation, emphasizing their goal to achieve 90% service reliability.
This new alliance, which includes two of the five largest ocean carriers, is set to commence operations on February 1 next year, adopting a hub and spoke model for mainliner and transshipment services to boost reliability.
Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd, and Kenni Skotte, Vice President and Head of Ocean Network Product at Maersk, participated in a panel to discuss Gemini’s strategy to attain 90% reliability, notably-high compared to the current industry average of 53%.
Skotte expressed optimism about reaching their ambitious reliability target, acknowledging current market skepticism due to lower average reliability score. He predicted that by next year, they would demonstrate the effectiveness of their strategy.
The Gemini Cooperation plans to enhance its network with 57 services across seven trades, emphasizing increased and structured use of their controlled transshipment hubs to improve service stability and reliability. Both leaders highlighted the strategic design of their operations to mitigate delays and their ripple effects across services.
Despite potential routing changes due to conflict in the Red Sea, with initial plans to navigate around the Cape of Good Hope, both Jansen and Skotte confirmed that these adjustments would not compromise their reliability target.
Hapag-Lloyd’s boss pointed out the flexibility of their network to handle different scenarios while maintaining leading reliability standards.
Skotte concluded that their innovative network model aims to set a new high standard for the industry by significantly boosting schedule reliability for their customers’ benefit.
