Northport in Port Klang continues to attract more mainline and feeder operators despite talks about declining freight rates and surge in capacity.

Malaysia’s foremost container terminal, which has a pool of 24 quay cranes, has attracted 10 new services in the first half of this year.

The deputy chief executive officer of Klang Container Terminal/Klang Port Management, Abdul Hamid Baba said the terminal, which accounts 65 per cent of the total container trade at Port Klang would continue to the most popular port in Malaysia for shipping lines.

Northport received first new service this year with the arrival of Hyundai Bridge of Hyundai Merchant Marine when the Korean carrier extended its Korea Middle East service to Port Klang

This was followed by the inauguration of five other new regional feeder services – Shin Yang Shipping, Vega Star Marine, New Econ Line, Bangladesh Shipping Corporation and Jet Feeder Services.

Shin Yang Shipping provides a direct connection to Miri Port in East Malaysia while Jet Feeder Services relayed Penang and Pasir Gudang boxes via Port Klang effective April this year.

The national carrier of Bangladesh - Bangladesh Shipping Line - joined the other feeder operators at Northport - HRC Shipping, QC Container Line, Sea Consortium, Orient Express Line - to serve their country port of Chittagong effective May this year. 

Vega Star Marine mounted regular services between Port Klang and Prawang port in Sumatra, Indonesia while New Econ Line and Maersk line connected  Port Klang with Ho Chi Minh and Saigon.

New services during the year also included Wan Hai line of Taiwan launching its Japan China Service in May.

Bombay Malaysia Express service, operated by Mitsui OSK Lines expanded its service with three new partners during the year, namely Hyundai Merchant Marine, Mitsui OSK Lines and Samudera Shipping.

The latest in the growing list new services at Northport  was  mounted by the New World Alliance members comprising Hyundai Merchant Marine, APL-NOL and Mitsui OSK Line. The weekly Asia Europe service connects Le Harve, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Southampton in a single string and provides the fastest transit time of 15 days between Port Klang and Le Harve.

The increasing number of new service with bigger capacity ships in the existing route has raised box traffic handled at Northport by more than 11 per cent to 910,054 teu in the January-May period of this year.

Total import volume amounted to 463,872 TEU as against 414,447 TEU in 2000.

Total export volume was 446,182 TEU in 2001 as compared with 403,195 TEU in 2000 representing an 11.9 per cent increase in  total imports and 10.6 per cent increase in total exports during the first five months period of this year.

The new feeder services at Northport helped to raised total transhipment traffic by more than 38 per cent to 368,442 TEUs in the first five months of this year as compared with 266,737 TEUs in the corresponding period of last year said Hamid Baba on board the 5,500-TEU Hyundai Fortune on her maiden voyage at Northport last week.

“To cope with the expanding liner networks, Northport will be taking delivery of five super post-panamax quay cranes between July and December 2001 to meet the needs of the growing shipping lines and alliances which are deploying larger vessels and increasing  their frequencies at Port Klang,” said Hamid.