• Investment World
• eWorld
• Brand Line
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest
• The New Manager

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Cross Currency

• Rates
  
  

Shipping

• Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources
• In Focus
• In Depth

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• The Hindu ePaper
• Business Line
• Business Line ePaper
• Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

V. Sajeev Kumar

Kochi , Dec. 22

Kochi Port will soon have a connection to the US East Coast in container service. IDX Service, partners of DP World, has made an announcement for the starting of a weekly schedule from Kochi from January 5, 2007.

Senior officials in the DP World said here that the port rotation would be Colombo-Tuticorin-Kochi-Nava Sheva-Mundra-Barcelona-New York-Norfolk and Charleston.

The service with eight vessels of about 2,800 TEU capacity would be operated by the consortium consisting of Zim Line, SCI, Emirates Shipping, OOCL and Italia Marittima (Evergreen).

The officials pointed out that exporters from the hinterland such as Coimbatore, Tirupur, Karur, Salem and Bangalore who normally would have to truck their cargo to Tuticorin to connect this service, would now have the benefit of connecting the same vessel from Kochi, giving them the advantage of an extra day to connect the vessel at Kochi.

The transit time to the US East Cost will also reduce substantially as Kochi will be the last port of call in South India. These advantages will immensely help time sensitive cargo such as garments, made-ups, handloom, coir products and perishable goods. Since there will not be any transhipment, exporters will now be in a position to commit delivery times to their consignees.

The mainline services to Europe and East Africa from Cochin are also in advanced stages of discussion, the officials added.

Besides, the DP World has also tied up with Container Corporation of India to run bi-weekly services to link the Rajiv Gandhi Container terminal to facilitate the carriage of additional cargo from the Concor ICD at Whitefield, Bangalore.

It may be recalled that it was only in November that Kochi Port got the first scheduled mainline call of the Hyper Galex service to connect Kochi to China, Far East and West Asia.

More Stories on : Shipping | Supply Chain Management

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Anxious wait

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line