DHL has launched direct, less-than-containerload (LCL) services from New York to Vienna, Austria, and Klaipeda, Lithuania. The new routes are part of an ongoing rollout of direct consolidations. DHL has started up nine direct LCL routes from the U.S. to global destinations since the beginning of the year. The new weekly guaranteed service to Austria is being provided through Danmar Lines, DHL Global Forwarding's in-house carrier. It results in shipments arriving up to five days earlier than before, the company claimed. Exporters in the U.S. can now ship cargo every Thursday from New York to Austria, in a 14-day, port-to-port service. They can then extend their supply chains throughout Eastern Europe, to markets in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia. The biweekly direct service to Klaipeda, departing New York every Tuesday, reduces transit time by five to seven days, according to DHL. With a port-to-port transit time of 18 days, the service links shippers to the Baltic trade in Tallin, Riga, Vilnius, Minsk and Kiev.
