PIL moves closer to weekly target

Alan Peat
AS IT celebrates almost a year of operation, the Pacific International Lines (PIL) container service between South East Asia, SA and West Africa is gradually increasing its frequency.
When the service was launched last August four ships were employed on a fortnightly rotation. But, according to local agents ForeShore Ships Agency, a weekly frequency has always been the ultimate intention.
And this is getting close.
The line now has eight vessels on the trade, according to ForeShore m.d. Kieran Sullivan.
"We need nine ships to go weekly," he told FTW, "but we have already been able to get the frequency down to about every 9-10 days."
However, Sullivan added, they are not yet advertising this on a strict daily count.
Delays in West Africa - and particularly the congestion at Lagos in Nigeria - are a challenge to schedule integrity.
But the PIL fleet is currently being readied to bring the frequency down to the seven-day level, according to Sullivan.
"Better tonnage has already been chartered in and we will start to see the line's newbuilds coming into the fleet from September onwards at the rate of about two-to-three newbuilds a month until the line has six of its own vessels in the fleet."
All of these ships, Sullivan added, will be of 1 000 TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit) capacity, and all self-geared.
"Once this has been achieved - and if the Nigerian customs authorities stop this nonsense of checking every single container and jamming up the port - we will have the equipment for a weekly service," he said.
The present port rotation is Singapore-Durban-Cape Town-Lagos-Tema-Cotonou-Abidjan-CT-Durban-Singapore. "We also intend to start calls at Douala, Cameroon in the next couple of sailings," Sullivan told FTW.
From Singapore, PIL tranships to its own feeder companies and distributes throughout its Asian network: nine days sailing to Bangkok, for example, seven days to Jakarta and four to Hong Kong.