Shipping lines operating on the CKA and NEAX services between East Asia and Australia have advised that the two services will be merged from next February in another step to rationalise the current service offerings. The new service will be labelled FOX (Far East Asia Oceania Express) and will have 6 vessels shared by Hanjin, Mitsui OSK, K-Line, OOCL and COSCO.

The rotation for FOX is set as Yokohama, Osaka, Pusan, Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Yokohama.

This will create further reductions in capacity on the China to Australia trade-lane and the lines hope to be able to increase rates in the new year as a result. The rationalisation comes mainly as a result of NYK (the Japanese mega-carrier Nippon Yusen Kaisha) withdrawing from the Australian market.