Streamlined hubs facilitate regular seafreight links

The African market is an integral
part of the Mediterranean
Shipping Company (MSC)
business life, according to director
Glenn Delve.
“We trade in all the major ports
in the continent,” he told FTW, “and
from South Africa we have weekly
direct or indirect calls in the ports
along both the east and west coasts.”
For West Africa, MSC uses Las
Palmas on the Canary Islands as its
hub port with weekly feeder services
into all the ports along the West
African coastline, except in Angola,
which the line serves directly from
SA.
The east coast is equally well
served, with weekly calls at the ports
along the Mozambique coastline – and
with cargoes transported into and
out of the hinterland and overborder
to and from the other south eastern
African countries.
The other central and eastern
African countries are served with
weekly services to the hub ports
at Mombasa in Kenya and Dar es
Salaam in Tanzania.
Beyond that to the north, MSC
services all the Middle East countries
from the hub port of Jebel Ali in
the United Arab Emirates (UAE),
35-kilometres south-west of Dubai
– and, with 67 berths and a size of
134.68 km², the world’s largest manmade
harbour and the biggest port in
the Middle East.
The south, east and north east of
Africa is also serviced onwards to the
Indian sub-continent, and the Far East.
The line uses either Durban or the
new 16-m draught, deep-water port of
Ngqura extensively as alternate hubs
for cargoes from Europe and the Far
East directly into SA or up the coasts
to East and West Africa. “That,” said
Delve, “is a choice made depending
on the respective fluidity at each of
the ports.”
There is also the vibrancy of the
new monarch of the trade world –
China.
“China is now unbreakably linked
with the African continent, and South
Africa with China,” he said. “MSC is
a major sea connection between these
two huge continents.”