Chinese shipping companies are ramping up efforts to explore Arctic routes, aiming to explore alternatives that bypass traditional shipping chokepoints and cut transit times to Europe – an increasingly important export market amid unresolved tariff tensions with the US.

SeaLegend Line, a Chinese shipping company founded in 2022, dispatched its first Arctic express vessel, the Istanbul Bridge, from Qingdao in Shandong province on Tuesday. It is expected to arrive in Gdansk, Poland, on October 16, the company said.

“This marks our first dedicated service on the Arctic route, designed to serve cross-border e-commerce and high-value goods,” it said.

Before arriving in Gdansk, the Istanbul Bridge, which can carry around 4,100 twenty-foot equivalent units, will call at Felixstowe, the United Kingdom’s biggest container port, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the biggest container port outside Asia, and Hamburg, Germany.

SeaLegend said it is expected to take 18 days to travel from Ningbo – its last port of call in China – to Felixstowe, a week faster than the China-Europe Railway Express and less than half the 40 days it would take for a ship travelling via the Suez Canal.

The Istanbul Bridge is smaller than the vessels that traditionally use the Suez Canal route, and the company said that while the Northern Sea Route (NSR) offered significantly shorter transit times, it cost more per container.

It said the shipping rates for the Arctic line service fell between those of the China-Europe Railway Express and traditional shipping fees – targeting customers with time-sensitive cargo such as cross-border e-commerce parcels and high-value goods including energy storage cabinets and power batteries.