New vessel adds capacity into Great Lakes region

WITH THE September launch of the 1 800-ton, multi-purpose vessel, the MV Teza, the Burundi-based Batralac shipping line now has three ships in its fleet, all plying Lake Tanganyika. The new ship carries either breakbulk cargo or 42 TEUs (twenty foot equivalent units) - or a combination of both. The MV Tora meantime has a cargo capacity of 1 200-t and the MV Rwegura, 500-t. The fleet, according to Salex's Bertrand Vidal, has seen its activities develop since the launch of the first ship in 1985, with the new vessel supplying much-needed capacity on the under-serviced Great Lakes routes. The main port for the three vessels is Mpulungu in Zambia, situated approximately 1 100 kilometres north of Lusaka and the transit point for various SA cargoes into the Great Lakes region. From there, the vessels call on the other lake ports of Bujumbura in Burundi, Kigoma in Tanzania and Kalundu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with onward transport to other destinations in the region. A lot of the fleet capacity is used for SA breakbulk cargoes travelling into the region, Vidal added. "There is now quite a bit of manufactured cargo from SA going into this Great Lakes region," said Vidal, a trend that he expects to continue into the future.