On August 22 (local time), according to TASS news agency, a container ship of PanStar Company (Korea) left Busan port to go to Europe via the Northern Maritime Route, a maritime route running through the Arctic Ocean. This is the first time a commercial container ship of South Korea has made a journey through this route.
The PanStar Acro is expected to enter the Northern Sea Route around August 30, then move through the Arctic Sea around September 7. According to the plan, the ship will successively dock at the port of Felixstowe in England, Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Gdansk in Poland before returning to South Korea. The entire journey is expected to last about 45 days.
PanStar Acro is a 2,758 TEU container ship, operated by PanStar Line, capable of operating in icy conditions. The ship is undergoing the first test voyage of a South Korean container ship on the Arctic shipping route, to assess the commercial exploitation capacity of this route.
Choosing the Northern Sea Route may help shorten the freight transport distance from South Korea to Europe by about 7,000km and reduce about 10 days compared to the traditional transport route through the Suez Canal. On this trip, PanStar Acro carried 837 TEUs of goods, including chemical products, used cars, auto parts and empty containers. This is also the first time since 2016 that a South Korean ship has made a journey through the Arctic sea route.
The Northern sea route is considered a potential maritime route connecting Asia and Europe through the Arctic. According to sources, PanStar Acro's trip aims to assess the commercial feasibility as well as the operating conditions of the route.
The South Korean government is currently promoting the development of Busan into a maritime center, as the country seeks new transport routes connecting with Europe.
TEU is the unit used to measure the capacity of a container ship, in which 1 TEU is equivalent to a standard 20-foot container (about 6.1m). For example, 1,000 TEU can be understood as a capacity equivalent to about 1,000 20-foot containers.
