With just 10 weeks to go before the Twin Stars officially set sail, and two weeks to go before reservations open, Maersk Line and Hajag-Lloyd Line have announced that they will cancel the port of Felixstowe on the Asia-Northern Europe route in favour of the London Gateway port.

Under the existing Gemini network, there will be four Asia-to-Northern Europe routes - AE1, AE2, AE3 and AE5 - with UK routes on AE1, AE3 and AE5.

A customer consultant for Maersk said the company recently conducted a review of the new network with Hapag-Lloyd and "during this optimisation process and a review of services in Asia and Europe, we concluded that the London Gateway is the best port to serve our customers importing/exporting goods to and from the UK."

"This strategic decision is part of the goal of reducing network complexity and aims to improve reliability, coverage and speed for customers by primarily adopting a single carrier loop and reducing port calls per service."

"As a result of this change, Felixstowe will no longer be part of the Gemini network shared by Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd," the company added.

Maersk added that the re-routing would not affect the services it operates outside Gemini. According to the eeSea liner database, the Danish carrier currently has four other routes calling at the port of Felixstowe that are not related to MSC's existing 2M agreement, which expires on February 1.

These include routes within the Norse-Mediterranean region operated in partnership with Borchard Lines, Hapag-Lloyd, OOCL and Turkon, a feeder route to Scandinavia and two separate Europe-Middle East routes.

Twin Star's other UK port calls include two weekly stops at the London Gateway on its Middle East/Indo-Europe route and three stops at Southampton on its transatlantic route. A separate advisory by Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd said the stops would go ahead as planned.