Direct Canada service gets the thumbs up

A NEW service just launched by the Canadian CSAL shipping line gives SA shippers and importers a new direct seafreight connection between SA, Canada and the east coast of the US (EC-USA). The Montreal-based line has launched a monthly roll-on, roll-off (ro-ro), breakbulk and container service covering the ports of Montreal, Baltimore, Durban, Cape Town, Richards Bay and Walvis Bay. The multi-purpose service handles a variety of cargoes, from general breakbulk to heavy-lift and oversized – and has specialised expertise in handling the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) classes 1 and 7 dangerous cargo. CSAL has slot-chartered up to 150-TEUs per vessel to Hapag Lloyd on the Montreal–Durban– Cape Town loop. The line will initially deploy two 17 500-deadweight (dwt), multi-purpose, Astrakhan Mark III type vessels which it intends to bring up to three in the third quarter of this year. Sales, marketing and operations for CSAL in South Africa will be managed by Mitchell Cotts Maritime, a division of Grindrod. The service has met with instant approval from an FTW reader – a forwarder who is currently generating more business to east coast Canada. “Most of the shipping lines from SA only offer direct service into the USA with on-carriage to Toronto and Montreal from New York,” he said. “The potential of now having a service that would provide a direct sailing from SA into Montreal sparked my attention, as it seemed that this would cut out a number of the problems in using services via New York.”