Maersk MECL service at Jeddah port links Saudi Arabia to US, India

Maersk operates the MECL service as a weekly rotation connecting Jeddah to Nhava Sheva and Mundra in India, Salalah in Oman, Tangier in Morocco, and Newark in the U.S. The service adds direct capacity on a corridor where container rates have been volatile since Red Sea disruptions forced rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope.

Mawani said the service strengthens Jeddah's position as a transshipment hub for cargo moving between Asia, the Middle East and the U.S. East Coast. The authority has added multiple new services at Saudi ports over the past two years as part of the National Transport and Logistics Strategy, which targets raising the kingdom's container handling capacity to over 40 million TEUs annually by 2030.