The company, Sea Legend, tested the premise last year when it completed the first China-to-Europe container ship transit through the frigid Northern Sea Route (NSR) along Russia's coastline.
The journey from the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo to the English port of Felixstowe took 20 days, according to the company -- about half the time it takes for shipments from China to Europe via the Suez Canal.
Sea Legend will now become the first operator to run a regular container service through the NSR, for a seven-week period until October 3.
A Sea Legend ship called "Dubai Tower" will leave Ningbo for Felixstowe on Saturday night, an employee at the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port told AFP on Friday.
Other shipping companies have transited the Arctic passage before, with Denmark's Maersk the first to do so in 2018.
The NSR saw a record 23 container transits in 2025, up from 15 the previous year, according to shipping analysis from business insurer Allianz Commercial published in June.
But many firms have pledged to avoid regular routing in the area, due to the risk of speeding up melting ice.
Major shipping companies including France's CMA CGM, Switzerland-headquartered MSC and Germany-based Hapag Lloyd have signed a US-based nonprofit's pledge to "avoid Arctic trans-shipment routes", which include the NSR.
"Though these routes can offer decreased transit times, increasing vessel traffic on Arctic shipping routes poses great risk and potentially devastating environmental impacts," reads the Ocean Conservancy website.
However, analysts say the Arctic is an important future trade route, particularly for China, which in 2018 outlined its vision for greater access to the region through a "Polar Silk Road".
The period up to October 3 is "broadly aligned with the period when ships can expect to transit without icebreaker assistance", Niels Rasmussen, chief shipping analyst at the shipping lobby BIMCO, wrote in a note.
Sea Legend's departing ships, however, will carry less than 0.5 percent of the weekly container volume from East and Southeast Asia to North Europe, he said.
"As the service will only operate for eight weeks, that is equal to less than 0.1 percent of the annual container volumes between the two regions," he added.
burs-mya/reb/sco