The shipping company Evergreen Marine will inaugurate on 25 November 2026 its AEF5 service between several Asian ports, Dar es Salaam and Maputo. This new link must offer importers from the South African province of Gauteng an alternative route of goods from China.

The Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen Marine plans to launch a new containerized link between Asia and East and Southern Africa. Named AEF5, the service will make its first departure from Shanghai on November 25, 2026.

The rotation will also serve Ningbo and Nansha, China, then Port Klang, Malaysia, before joining Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Maputo, Mozambique. The return to Shanghai will include a stopover in Singapore. Evergreen announces a complete cycle of 56 days.

This new service extends the possibilities of transporting goods to southern Africa, especially for importers in Gauteng province, where Johannesburg and Pretoria are located.

From Maputo, the rail link to Johannesburg covers approximately 584 km, compared with 720 km from the South African port of Durban, according to World Bank data. The corridor passes through the Ressano Garcia border crossing, on the Mozambican side, and the Komatipoort border crossing, in South Africa, before crossing the province of Mpumalanga.

The development of this link also takes place in a context of extension of the port capacities of Maputo. The concessionaire of the port, Maputo Port Development Company (MPDC), has set in its 2025 annual report a capacity target of 530,000 TEUs (equivalent to 20 feet) for its container terminal.

The AEF5 service will also complement Evergreen's regional offer, which announced in April 2026 the SAF service, operated with Pacific International Lines (PIL) and serving Durban and Cape Town from Shanghai and Ningbo. The company has not yet specified the departure frequency or capacity available on the new link.