The new service announced Thursday, designated MA2 (Mediterranean West Africa), will operate out of Algeciras, Spain — a key Mediterranean hub — and call at ports in Morocco, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote d'Ivoire. The round voyage takes about 35 days and will deploy five container vessels of about 2,800 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) each.
HMM will co-operate the service with Japan's Ocean Network Express, a fellow member of the Premier Alliance. Sailings are scheduled to begin in the second week of July from Algeciras.
The MA2 route is the first tangible step under HMM's hub-and-spoke strategy, a central pillar of the carrier's 2030 long-term plan, in which large vessels handle major deep-sea trunk routes while smaller feeder ships branch out to secondary ports. The company said linking Africa — a market it had not previously served — would meaningfully broaden the services it can offer cargo shippers.
"This MA2 service will serve as a starting gun for strengthening HMM's global network through the hub-and-spoke strategy," said an HMM spokesperson, adding the company plans to keep raising customer satisfaction through differentiated service offerings.
To support the strategy, HMM has been steadily building up its feeder fleet. The company placed an order for 10 vessels of 2,800 TEU with HD Hyundai Heavy Industries in March, acquired two 1,900 TEU ships earlier this year, and in October 2025 ordered a combined 24 feeder vessels — securing about 24 feeders within a six-month span.
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