Shipping services to Fiji and Pacific being improved

The AUSPAC consortium, made up of Neptune Pacific Line, Pacific Direct Line, Pacific Forum Line and Sofrana Unilines, is upgrading its Pacific islands service from Australia to fixed-day-fortnightly. The upgraded AUSPAC service will provide the best direct connections from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane to the South Pacific ports. These include Noumea, Port Vila, Lautoka, Suva, Apia and Pago on the vessels Capitaine Tasman and Forum Pacific. Through negotiated windows in the main Australian and island ports, the fixed day pattern will be ideal for clients trading between Australia and the islands, but also for inter-island connections from Fiji. Beyond the improvement of the AUSPAC dedicated service, the partners announce they will be enhancing the connectivity of their AUSPAC and SOUTHPAC networks.

The latter, also fixed day, is operated by the same partners offering the Southern Lily fortnightly from New Zealand to/from Nuku’alofa, Apia, Pago and also the weekly service New Zealand to/from Fiji.

By coordinating respective schedules and port windows, they will provide all clients in the islands, as well as Main Line Operator partners, with improved connections through three strategic hubs. These are through Brisbane for the AUSPAC service, Auckland for the SOUTHPAC service and Suva for the outer islands services (Wallis, Futuna, Funafuti, Nauru, Tarawa, Majuro).

The partners will alternate the AUSPAC and SOUTHPAC loops in Western and American Samoa to deliver weekly arrivals. Neptune will be upsizing one of their two ships, Capitaine Wallis & Capitaine Cook, in the already weekly FIJI FEEDER and will introduce an alternating weekly call into Nuku’Alofa into this service. Combined, the services of the regional carriers will be weekly in Fiji, both Samoa’s and Tonga. The improved AUSPAC service will start from November. The AUSPAC partners have extended the employment of the two 13,000dwt geared “R Class” vessels. Both vessels provide 2 x 40T cranes and 100 reefer plugs. The NZ based changes will also be phased in from November.

The regional carriers are creating a south pacific network without peer and, together with partners’ other services, will connect the South Pacific markets to the rest of the world with the fastest and most frequent sailing options available