Maersk pushes Nansha port gateway

Getting closer to customers and opportunities for growth were behind the decision by Maersk Line to establish Nansha port as its the third largest gateway into South China for freight transportation. Located in the middle of the West Pearl River delta, this is seen as a strategic development port that is expected to continue to grow into the future. “Maersk Line saw the potential of Nansha a few years ago and has invested heavily in the Nansha terminal through APM Terminals to further improve the service offering to customers,” a spokesman said. “This gateway allows for improved transit times and provides an advantage to our customers’ supply chains.” As trade between South Africa and the Far East continues to grow, the line believes it is important to provide customers with a reliable and flexible product. “This is what we do through our Safari and M-Express services. The Safari service has been upgraded to 6500- TEU vessels and offers direct calls to five key ports in the Far East. The M-express deploys 2500-TEU vessels and offers a direct service from Maputo to Tanjung Pelepas, Malaysia,” said the spokesman. In both South China and North China the Maersk Line organisational setup for customer service and sales is based on the Africa trade. “This enables our Far East to South Africa trade teams to accumulate trade-specific and customer knowledge, thereby creating a team of customer care experts for this trade,” said the spokesman. “The South African customer service teams provide an end-to-end service based on dedicated customer accounts, and currently there are two regional centres for customer service. Exports handled by the team based in Cape Town and imports handled by the Durban team. Our aim is to provide consistent and effective customer service from these teams to our customers located in various parts of South Africa.”