T.E. Raja Simhan

New service to reduce transit time by four days

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Chennai March 5 Maersk Line will start a weekly direct container shipping service from Chennai to Savannah (US east coast) from March 16. This would reduce transit time between the two destinations by four days and help consignees save on container handling charge at the transhipment port of Colombo, according to a company official.

At present, to send cargo from Chennai to the US east coast, an exporter first sends the container in feeder ships to Colombo, where large `mother' vessels from South-East Asia pick up the boxes onward to the US. Customers need to pay a handling charge that is added into the ocean freight, Mr Rajieve Krishnan, Senior General Manager (India-South East Region), Maersk, a division of the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, told Business Line.

More space

Invariably, the large vessels are full with less space available for India-based boxes. However, the new direct service offers a lot of space to the trade, he said.

To discharge and load container on board a ship at the Colombo port, it costs $80 for a TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit) and $121.50 for a FEU (forty foot equivalent unit), according to information available in the Sri Lanka Shippers Council Web site.

For a long time, Maersk clients such as Wal-Mart, IKEA, Gap, American Power Company, Ford and Saint-Gobain have sought a US direct service, he said.

Port rotation

The new service, called MECL 2, would have the port rotation of Chennai, Colombo (Sri Lanka), Salalah (Oman), Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), Gioria Tauro (Italy), Algeciras (Spain), Newark (US), Norfolk (US) and Savannah (US), and vice versa.

Eight ships of capacities ranging between 4,000 and 5,000 TEUs would operate in the service, he said.

The service on every Friday from Chennai begins with the container vessel Maersk Dijbouti making a maiden visit on March 16. Arrangements have been made with Chennai Container Terminal (P) Ltd, the private container terminal operator at Chennai port, to give priority berthing for vessels under the new service. The terminal operator has also assured a productivity of 100-110 container moves an hour, he said.

Exports

Maersk hopes to export around 18,000 TEUs a year through the new service. Chennai would act as transhipment hub for cargo to and from Visakhapatnam, Kolkata/Haldia and Bangladesh.

Some of the cargoes going through the Chennai port to the US include garments, food items, tyres, granite (slabs and stones), building material and general department store goods (like furniture). Inbound cargo includes chemicals, medicines, newsprints, waster papers and scrap, he said.

In 2006, CCT handled 8.29 lakh TEUs and Maersk was the top container line with a handling of 1.05 lakh TEUs.

And, for Maersk the US (both inbound and outbound) constitutes nearly 10 per cent of its container handling at Chennai, he said.

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