ASEAN Ports Association Malaysia (MAPA)

The CMA-CGM Group expects to grow its container volume in Port Klang between 12 per cent and 13 per cent again this year, if everything goes reasonably well.

“It’s very difficult to predict. We don’t want to be too optimistic and tempt fate, because there is still a lot of uncertainties in the European and US economy but we think with the good recovery last year we can continue,” CMA-CGM & ANL Malaysia managing director Simon Whitelaw told reporters during an appreciation lunch to mark CMA-CGM’s for breaching 2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in Port Klang.

CMA-CGM registered between 12 and 13 per cent growth in container volume in Port Klang in 2010, due to good growth in transshipment as well as local cargo.

Last year the company contributed about 26 per cent to Port Klang’s overall throughput volume.

Local cargo makes up about 10 – 12 per cent of the cargo CMA-CGM handles while the remainder is from transfer of containers and transshipment.

Whitelaw said however that the fourth quarter of 2010 saw some softening in cargo movement, as China’s consumer demand eased off.

“The fourth quarter was definitely softening a little bit partly because business tailed off, and China was not the big consumer demand everyone was expecting. Fourth quarter was a little bit softer from the third quarter,” Whitelaw said.

CMA-CGM started out in Port Klang in 1998, handling some 20,000 TEUs.

Meanwhile Port Klang Authority chairman Datuk Lee Hwa Beng said he is confident that the port would be able to at least maintain its world ranking of the previous year. Port Klang was ranked 13th in the world’s busiest container port in 2009.

“We improved by 21 per cent last year, we still don’t know the world ranking for 2010 but we expect to at least maintain it. I don’t think many ports in the world have seen such a large jump,” Lee said.

Port Klang, which comprises Westports and Northport, recorded a 21 per cent rise in container volume in 2010, to 8.9 million TEUs.

Port Klang, comprising Northport and Westports, has retained its title as the country’s busiest container port in the first half of this year, with a 48.3 per cent share of the total number of containers handled by all Malaysian ports.

Its rival, Port of Tanjung Pelepas in Johor, was listed second busiest, handling 35.4 per cent of the country’s total container throughput.

Port Klang moved 4.31 million TEUs (20-foot equivalent units) of cargo in the January-June 2010 period, up 29.3 per cent from 3.33 million TEUs a year earlier, as the global economic recovery boosted cargo traffic, said Port Klang Authority (PKA) general manager Kee Lian Yong.

It handled 856,110 TEUs of exports, up 25.8 per cent from a year earlier, and the volume of imports rose 18.2 per cent to 828,082 TEUs. Transshipment volume rose 34.5 per cent to 2.62 million TEUs.

Kee said Westports led the way in the first half of 2010 with a 30 per cent increase in container volume from the same period in 2009, handling 2.65 million TEUs, while Northport saw a 28 per cent increase to 1.66 million TEUs last year.

“We are on track to achieve our stretch target of 8.4 million TEUs for the whole year, where Westports is projected to handle 5.2 million TEUs and Northport 3.2 million TEUs. The fourth quarter is traditionally the busiest quarter of the year,” Kee told Business Times in an interview.

Port Klang moved 7.31 million TEUs last year, a decline of 8.3 per cent compared with 7.97 million TEUs recorded in 2008.

“The projection for 2011 is a growth of 10 to 12 per cent in container volume (from 2010),” said Kee.

Meanwhile, in terms of tonnage handled, traffic through Port Klang in the first five months (January-May) of this year increased by 36.8 per cent to 65.54 million tonnes from 47.90 million tonnes a year earlier.

“PKA and the two terminal operators (Northport and Westports) took this time of slow-paced economy and downturn to reshape our strategies. These strategies have hastened and increased our growth even more so with the global economic recovery as can be seen by our growth percentage for the first half of 2010,” said Kee.

He added that the port authority is aware that emerging ports in Asia such as Vietnam and Sri Lanka pose stiff competition to Port Klang.

“In order for us to be competitive, we are constantly looking at our operations to ensure (we offer) effective and efficient service, are service oriented, and have cost-effective operations and a commercial competitive environment,” he said.

By: Kang Siew Li

Northport (Malaysia) Bhd has emerged as winner of the Asian Freight and Supply Chains awards (AFSCA) 2010, beating seven other ports in the region.

Malaysia’s leading port, Westports Malaysia Sdn Bhd, posted a healthy 27 per cent surge in its container volume for the first quarter of this year compared with the corresponding period of last year

Improvements were seen in both performance and productivity, especially in container operations, Westports said in a statement.

Westports container throughput was 1.244 million TEUs compared with 981,000 TEUs in the first quarter of 2009.

Local volume increased by 24 per cent while transshipment was up by 22 per cent.

“If we compare our first quarter figures with that of 2008, which had a stronger performance compared with the slower and weaker 2009, we have actually grown by 7 per cent and this puts us on a stronger platform to achieve 5.2 million TEUs for 2010,” said Westports executive director Ruben Emir Gnanalingam in the statement.

Westports recorded a container volume of 1.166 million TEUs in the first quarter of 2008.

“Looking forward, the outlook for 2010 will be generally better than in 2009. There has been an uptrend in Westports’ throughput in past months and that could well be extended into the rest of the year,” Ruben said.

Most encouraging was the growth of local boxes, which saw Westports market share in Port Klang rising to 44 per cent while that for transshipment growth was retained at 71 per cent.

Overall, Westports commanded a market share of 61 per cent in Port Klang.

A significant development in Q1 was the new world benchmark for productivity recently.

“Westports’ operations team yet again showed its dexterity and skills in container handling when it managed to hit crane productivity of 734 moves in a single hour of operations with nine-crane deployment, erasing the earlier mark of 665 mph done on a CMA vessel in 2008,” the statement said.

This feat was performed on March 9 while working on CSCL Pusan, a 9,600-TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit) vessel belonging to China Shipping.

A total of 5,244 moves were achieved on this vessel, which sails on the AEX 7 service (eastbound).

The productivity achieved over such a large volume of moves across the vessel continues to boost the port’s status as the World’s Best 5 for Productivity and a leading mega transshipment hub in the region.

On port expansion works, Ruben said: “We will build a new 300m wharf when we hit 450,000 TEUs consecutively for three months.

“This would be followed by the acquisition of additional equipment and manpower. Our current capacity is 7.2 million TEUs.” – Bernama

NCB Holdings Bhd’s direct subsidiary, Northport (Malaysia) Bhd, is expected to register an increased cargo volume of between 10 per cent and 15 per cent this year.

Northport Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Basheer Hassan said the company sees an increase in both the container and cargo business segments amid an improving economy.

“Northport registered a total volume of 2.858 million TEUs in 2009, a decrease of five per cent compared to 3.006 million previously,” Basheer told reporters after NCB Holdings” annual general meeting (AGM), in Petaling Jaya today.

He said the container mix at Northport stood at 50 per cent for both import and export containers.

Transshipment containers made up 38.6 per cent of the total volumed handled by Northport.

Under the conventional cargo business, Northport handled a combined volume of 6.53 million freight weight tonnes (FWT) last year.

Meanwhile, NCB Holdings Group”s chairman, Tun Ahmad Sarji Abdul Hamid said Northport continued to be the leading gateway for indigenous trade, handling 58.6 per cent of the country”s import and export volume passing through Port Klang.

He said the total volume of containers under all classes handled through Port Klang during 2009 was 7,309,779 TEUs, reflecting a decline of 8.3 per cent compared with 7,973,579 TEUs recorded in 2008.

On the planned construction of Wharf 8A, Ahmad Sarji said the group remained ready to re-activate the plan.

It would be to meet its customers’ demand for enhanced capacity to service their growth in business.

“Given the current growth, we are quite optimistic that we need to expand the capacity. This was held back in 2009 in the last quarter because of economic downturn.”

With the indication of growth now, it would be sustainable to invest, said Basheer.

He said Northport will call for tender in one or two weeks for building of the wharf.

The size of the wharf will be 300 meters in length and 17 meters in depth.

This will allow ships to berth at any one time there, he added. — Bernama

Penang Port Sdn Bhd (PPSB) is throwing the ball back into the court of international shipping lines who have slammed the terminal operator for not penalising shippers that overload their cargo containers on a vessel.

PPSB chief executive officer Datuk Ahmad Ibnihajar said it was based on the appeals made by shipping lines to allow overloaded vessels into the port that resulted in no enforcement made to date.

“It’s the members of the International Ship Owners’ Association of Malaysia (ISOA) themselves who have been appealing to us and now they are blaming us for not penalising the offending shippers,” he told Business Times.

Ahmad was responding to a Business Times report where international container shipping lines operating at Penang Port slammed the terminal operator for not penalising shippers who overload their cargo containers on a vessel, saying it could lead to an accident.

ISOA secretary Fong Keng Lun said requests for enforcement have been sent to PPSB as early as June last year, but so far the calls have gone unheeded.

Ahmad said PPSB will be calling a meeting of all its users soon and ask them to decide whether they want enforcement to take effect immediately.

“The ISOA members can decide if they want us to ignore their previous appeal and support the rule that any overweight containers detected by us be not allowed to be loaded onto the vessels,” he added.

Fong had claimed that ISOA had sent repeated requests to PPSB to impose the rule that any overweight containers detected by the terminal operator will not be allowed to be loaded onto the vessels.

He said apart from the risks to human lives and the transportation operators’ equipment, some of the overweight containers were subsequently detected at transshipment ports like Hong Kong and were held back until the shipping lines had repacked the overweight containers.

The maximum permissible weight of a 20-foot container is 24 tonnes, 30.48 tonnes for a 40-foot container and up to 32 tonnes for a new-generation 40-foot container.

By : Marina Emmanuel