New services cater for growing commodity exports

Ensuring that capacity keeps pace with demand is part and parcel of every shipping line’s strategy – and the growing containerised commodity export market has seen the introduction by Safmarine of a number of additional containerised shipping services between South Africa and the Far East, says national commodity manager, Steven Simpson “Safmarine has met the demand for increased capacity in two ways,” says Simpson, “firstly by introducing a number of new services in 2010 and secondly by improving capacity on existing services.” The line’s FEW2 service operates weekly from Walvis Bay direct to Tanjung Pelepas, serving the mineral export market from Namibia and Zambia. Safmarine is also the main loader on the FEW3 service, which offers a fortnightly service out of Richards Bay direct to the East. “We’ve also provided increased capacity on the Safari 1 service, our largest service to the Far East, while the Safari 3 service, which calls Maputo on a weekly basis, and the ASAS service, which calls PE and Durban on its way to the Far East from South America, are additional options for shipping cargo to the East.”