Despite the slow down of the Thai economy and an increasing frequency of landbridge services, CMA CGM and Hub Line have confidently mounted a dedicated direct shuttle service between Port Klang and Thailand.

"We will be the first consortium to offer such comprehensive port of coverage in Thailand and we are confidence of capturing the fast growing volume of box traffic directly from Thailand,” said the CMA CGM representative -Operations Malaysia, Kamal Wijayasinghe

He said the joint service will start in mid July connecting all the major ports in Thailand namely Bangkok PAT (Port Authority of Thailand terminal), Bangpakong, Laem Cha Bang.

"We plan to handle up to 400 TEUs transshipment boxes per week from this service by year end. The new service will allow us to directly transship our Thai cargo via our six mainline strings that include three westbound, two eastbound and one regional service to the Middle East,” he said.

French Asia Line, Med Club Express service and North China Express are the westbound services while the two eastbound services are the Med Club Express and North China Express services.

Kamal said the service will be operated by our feeder arm, Feeder Associate Systems (FAS) which has an extensive network in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf. 

“We will be deploying one ship while Hubline will be deploying two carriers with 500 TEUs  carrying capacity each,” he added.

"We are committed to Port Klang and will be strengthening our presence by expanding our feeder and mainline networks at Port Klang,” he stressed.

The twice a week joint shuttle service is the latest developments in CMA CGM’s expansion drive, which saw the line deploying its latest fleet of 6,500 TEU vessels.

FAS also commenced a Jakarta – Westport dedicated service and hopes to expands the service in the near future.

Hub Line, a wholly owned subsidiary of EOX Group Berhad, will cater to the feeder needs of all Westport MLOs on a common carrier basis.

Hubline is a regional container shipping company with a vast network that stretches from Intra-Asian ports to Far East, Middle East Australia and Micronesia Islands.