The PanStar Acro container ship left the South Korean port of Busan last week, headed on a 45-day round-trip voyage to Europe. But in a break from past journeys, the ship sailed north, hugging Russia’s Arctic coast.
The voyage, which will take the PanStar Acro to Felixstowe, Rotterdam and Gdańsk, is a first South Korean commercial test of the Northern Sea Route (NSR), an Arctic shipping highway that governments, shipping lines and exporters hope will connect Asian manufacturers to European markets and reshape global trade as polar ice melts.