The vessel was the Hanya 1, a purpose-built 500 TEU vessel for the short sea service. The vessel is sailing on a “point-to-point” service and will call at ports including Osaka, Kobe, and Nagoya.

“Previously, container ships from Wuhan to Japan need transshipment in Shanghai and were often troubled by uncertainties in marine traffic and weather conditions, which directly increased the logistics cycle and costs of related enterprises.

“Zhang Lin, director of Wuhan New Port Administration Committee, said that compared with the past transshipment-needed river-ocean joint transportation, the new direct container shipping service saves more than a 1,000 km shipping distance and about two days of shipping time. It differs from the past shipping routes in management concepts, vessel utilization, cargo source organization and shipping services, noted Zhang,” Xinhua reported.

The city of Wuhan is also targeting attracting Japanese cargo bound for Europe to use its ports as an intermodal transhipment point. It claims rail routes to Europe through the Middle East are ten days faster than existing maritime routes between Japan and Europe.