German shipping major Hapag-Lloyd has signed a space charter agreement with the members of the 2M Alliance – Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC).

As informed, the space charter deal will give Hapag-Lloyd access to selected services of 2M on the Asia-North Europe trade.

“The addition of these services will enable Hapag-Lloyd to offer an even higher frequency of weekly departures and more routing options as well as to directly serve additional ports with high schedule reliability,” the company said.

The carrier’s expanded product offering on the Asia-North Europe trade will start in March 2020 and additional details will be provided in the coming weeks.

Earlier this month, Hapag-Lloyd revealed it was considering investments in new ships. The orders are likely to target ultra large container vessels (ULCVs) with the capacity of up to 23,000 TEUs, with the company following in the footsteps of its rivals CMA CGM and MSC which have already deployed some of their boxship giants on the Europe-Asia route.