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Wednesday, 8 April 2015 01:32 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Colombo International Container Terminals (CICT) has made a major breakthrough for the new year by attracting a brand new service to the Port of Colombo. CICT since its inception embarked on an aggressive and focused marketing strategy in attracting ‘new volumes’ to the Port of Colombo.
This approach was coupled together with fitting into the current dynamics of the shipping industry where the major shipping lines are ordering and upsizing their vessels to the ultra-large-container-carrier class, which are now increasing in size to over 20,000teus in capacity.
CICT is one of the very few limited container terminals in the whole of the Asian region, which could handle such large capacity deep draught ships. The ability to handle such ships is further complemented by having access to this niche market through its parent company CMHI which is now the world’s fifth largest global container terminal operator, thus giving the Port of Colombo a huge boost in attracting new services.
This new service is operated by two major carriers, Pacific International Lines (PIL) which is a major player in the African market and China Shipping Container Lines (CSCL) which is the national carrier of China. The service is run with a fleet of 12 ships, with both lines contributing seven vessels and five vessels respectively to augment the new service.
It is important to mention that CICT since its inception has made a concerted effort through the CMHI network in China, to attract CSCL to re-look at Colombo. This was done with close collaboration with the local agency as CSCL has had no regular services calling Colombo over the last decade or so.
With CICT opening the only deep water terminal in this region, capable of handling the 18,000+teu ships, CSCL was convinced about the potential in Colombo. CICT is proud that it has finally borne positive results and it is confident that the Port of Colombo could look forward to seeing the ultra-large-container-carrier class vessels of CSCL calling the Port of Colombo in the near future. It is interesting to note that CSCL currently operates the largest ships afloat with 19000+ teu capacity.
CICT General Manager Marketing and Commercial Tissa Wickramasinghe said that one of the critical factors in enabling the launch of this service via the Port of Colombo, was the unique ability of CICT to work in synergy with their parent company CMHI.
In fact this new service which made the maiden call at CICT on Monday calls at 12 ports spanning across from China to West Africa. What is important is that seven of these ports are featured in the CMHI global port network, and this key advantage was a major factor in convincing the partner shipping lines PIL and CSCL to launch this service via CICT in the Port of Colombo.
Such synergies give tremendous confidence to the major shipping lines when dealing with so many port calls in one service string. Given the success of its approach to introducing new volumes to the Port of Colombo, CICT’s focus is to move forward with this strategy of getting the attention of these carriers to recognise the potential of the Port of Colombo not only for its strategic geographic location, but also for the global standards of best practices, port productivity and service delivery which have been set by CICT. CICT takes pride in its service delivery standard which is now being established as the benchmark for the region.
