SHIPPING LINK WITH GERMANY,

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 278, 20 August 1938, Page 12

SHIPPING LINK WITH GERMANY,

First Regular Service Since

Before War

DECISION OF GERMAN COMPANIES

By Telegraph—Press Association.

Auckland, August 19

Marking one of the most important advances in the New Zealand shipping, trade in recent years, a regular direct cargo service between the Dominion and Germany will be inaugurated early in December. The service will be conducted jointly by the Hamburg-Amerika and North German Lloyd Lines, whose Auckland agents, Henderson and MacFarlane, Limited, to-day announced the new line.

The route will offer the first regular connection since the German-Australian Line withdrew shortly before the war. The first ship in the trade will be the Hamburg-Amerika steamer Nanmburg. which will load at Auckland early in Decemlier for Germany and the Continent. She will be followed by the same company’s steamer Gera. Both ships are well known in New Zealand, which they have visited in the service from Texas and Mexico conducted in conjunction witli the North German Lloyd Line. Only bare intimation of the two companies’ plans has yet been received in Auckland, but fuller details, particularly concerning outward trading from Germany to New Zealand, are expected shortly from Bremen. The decision lias been prompted largely through the growth of exports from the Dominion to the Continent.

Since the abandonment of the Ger-man-Australian Company with the onset of war, there has been no regular service between New Zealand and Germany. A few of the ships in the New Zealand-England trade have occasionally called at Hamburg or. oilier Continental ports to discharge produce on their way to London, and there also has been a considerable amount of cargo for Germany transhipped through United States and English ports. It is not known what effect the new service will have on the service to Boston and New York given by returning ships in the Gulf of Mexico trade, but it is pre sumed that calls will be made to the United States on the way to Germany if sufficient inducement is offered.