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The visiting-Indonesian Vice President His Jusof Kalla was given a
first-hand account of the ascent of Northport, at Port Klang as the leading
gateway port in Malaysia’s burgeoning international trade during his recent
visit to Malaysia.
In a special briefing at Northport, the Indonesian Vice President, was given
an insight into especially the recent inroads made by the leading Malaysian
port into providing value-added logistics services.
“Northport’s recent advances into regional distribution and port logistics
could be viewed as a successful role model in port development that focuses
on creating strong economic linkages with the national economy,” said the
Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Northport (Malaysia) Bhd, Dato
Basheer Hassan.
Basheer, who briefed Jusof Kalla, said the expansion of the value-added
services by the distripark was critical to further strengthening the role of
the port in the international trade of the country.
“Our efforts to integrate our core services with the value-added logistics
services as part of our response to the changing functionalities in the
transport and logistics pipeline have yielded positive results,” he said.
The ascent of Northport as logistics hub has been aided by the fact it is
Malaysia’s number one port with the most extensive global shipping
connectivity linking more than 300 global ports as well as due to the
accessibility of the distripark that is connected domestically and
internationally (via sea, road, rail and air), he noted.
Regional feedering connectivity with ports in Indonesia is among the
strongest at Northport in this region.
“Indeed we have leveraged on these advantages to widen and deepen our
outreach, including linking extensively with several ports in Indonesia,
Myanmar, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh,” said Basheer.
Last year the distripark handled a total of a 136,727 TEUs, an increase of
4.2 per cent over the volume of containers handled the previous year.
Northport, as a multi-port operator, not only concentrates on container
business but caters for the lucrative conventional business too.
Several international Non Vessel Operating Common Carriers (NVOCC) are
consolidating cargoes at the Distripark which is also serving as a vehicle
transit centre for the regional automotive trade.
Sea-air freight is also showing healthy growth since Northport is a
designated port of origin/destination for air freighting cargo worldwide.
With an annual container terminal capacity of 4 million TEus, Northport
registered a throughput volume of 2,632, 257 TEUs last year.
The container mix in Northport stood at approximately 50 per cent for both
import and export containers.
This comprised 63 per cent (1,670,274 teus) of the local container market
share in Port Klang. |
