ONE has terminated its slot charter on Maersk's Qilin service, impacting its AUX brand in the China-Australia trade lane.
Ocean Network Express has ceased its slot charter arrangement on Maersk's Qilin service, according to a report by Container News citing DynaLiners. As relayed by Wedoany, ONE joined the China-Australia trade lane in July of this year on a slot charter basis, remaining on the service for approximately four months before its withdrawal. No customer advisory has appeared on ONE's official website, and neither party has publicly disclosed the reasons for the termination. With the conclusion of the slot charter, ONE's capacity offering under its 'Australia Express (AUX)' brand on the route has also come to an end.
The Qilin service is an independently operated Maersk product, deploying five vessels of approximately 2,700 TEU each on a port rotation of Shanghai-Hong Kong-Sydney-Melbourne-Shanghai. ONE's role within the service was to charter a portion of the available capacity and resell it to shippers under its own AUX brand. The vessels and network infrastructure were provided by Maersk; ONE's commercial contribution was the marketing and sale of slot capacity. With the charter arrangement concluded, AUX loses its saleable inventory on the route, and the brand's service offering on this trade lane is effectively discontinued. This model - commonly described in liner markets as a slot charter with private-label resale - allows the brand operator to enter a trade lane rapidly without vessel commitment, though it correspondingly limits direct control over service operations.
The operational impact falls primarily on shippers and freight forwarders who had been booking through the AUX channel. With that channel now closed, cargo requiring continued access to the Qilin service must be booked directly with Maersk or rerouted via alternative China-Australia service offerings, with applicable capacity and pricing subject to each carrier's current quotations. For shippers holding AUX bookings on cargo not yet shipped, immediate contact with ONE's local agent is advisable to confirm whether existing bookings remain valid and to identify alternative arrangements. Given the absence of any public notice on ONE's official channels, written confirmation is the prudent course. Shippers with ongoing export requirements on the China-Australia corridor may wish to approach Maersk directly for Qilin capacity or evaluate competing carriers operating direct services to Australia's east and west coast ports, with vessel schedules, port calls, and acceptance conditions to be verified against carrier websites and booking confirmations.
From an industry perspective, ONE's participation in the Qilin service - from entry to withdrawal in roughly four months - illustrates the compressed timelines characteristic of the slot charter model: rapid market entry is matched by an equally rapid capacity to exit. For freight forwarders, this dynamic reinforces the importance of identifying, at the point of booking, the actual operating carrier behind a branded service, together with the vessel and slot source. Brand-level adjustments or withdrawals can alter service arrangements with limited notice, with consequent implications for delivery schedules and shipper communication. The Qilin service itself is unaffected by the termination of the charter arrangement and will continue under Maersk's independent operation. Beyond Qilin, multiple carriers maintain direct services on the China-Australia corridor, and forwarders are well advised to verify the actual carrier and slot arrangement on a shipment-by-shipment basis - accounting for cargo type, destination port, and delivery requirements - while building schedule tolerance for the service changes that brand-level realignments may introduce.
