Arctic shipping route to get weekly China-Europe service

Chinese shipowner Sea Legend is set to launch a weekly container service through the Northern Sea Route from Ningbo to Felixstowe on Saturday night, with voyages planned until October 3.

A Ningbo-Zhoushan Port employee told AFP that Sea Legend's ship Dubai Tower would leave Ningbo for the English port on Saturday night. Sea Legend tested the route last year, when the company said a China-to-Europe container ship transit along Russia's Arctic coast took 20 days, about half the time of shipments via the Suez Canal.

Other shipping companies have used the Arctic passage before, including Maersk in 2018. Allianz Commercial shipping analysis published in June said the Northern Sea Route had a record 23 container transits in 2025, up from 15 the year before.

The plan has renewed environmental concerns about vessel traffic in the Arctic. The Ocean Conservancy says increased traffic on Arctic shipping routes poses risks and potentially severe environmental impacts, and major shipping companies including CMA CGM, MSC and Hapag-Lloyd have signed its pledge to avoid Arctic trans-shipment routes.

Niels Rasmussen, chief shipping analyst at BIMCO, wrote that the schedule broadly matches the period when ships can expect to transit without icebreaker assistance. He said Sea Legend's departing ships would carry less than 0.5 percent of weekly container volume from East and Southeast Asia to North Europe, and less than 0.1 percent of annual volume because the service is limited to eight weeks.