Maiden call by United Arab Shipping vessel at Malta Freeport

MV Hatta, United Arab Shipping Company's high speed vessel with a capacity of 6,919 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs), called at Malta Freeport today. This vessel has a service speed of over 25 knots, significantly improving the transit times between ports of call.

UASC signed a contract for the building of eight new generation vessels in 2005 and MV Hatta, delivered on February 19, is the second vessel of this type joining MV Al Safat deployed in the Asia-Europe Container service.

This is the first European call for MV Hatta which will be deployed as part of the AEC service but it is planned that it will then be shifted to the Interim and AEC2 service. The AEC service, which started calling at Malta in January, has this port rotation: Malta Freeport - Rotterdam - Thamesport - Hamburg - Antwerp - Yokohama - Nagoya - Kobe -Hakata - Pusan - Kaoshiung - Yantian - Hong Kong - Singapore - Khor Fakkan - Jebel Ali - Jeddah.

Malta Freeport currently has connections with over 128 ports worldwide, 60 of which are throughout Europe, North Africa, the Black Sea and the Middle East.

UASC's existing fleet consists of 35 owned and chartered vessels; UASC's container fleet is currently in the region of 200,000 TEU capacity.