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T.E. Raja Simhan

Chennai, July 25 Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Orient Overseas (International) Ltd, will launch its new Indian Subcontinent East Coast Express (IEX) connecting India and Pakistan to the US East Coast.

This will be a replacement to the earlier IDX service, which connected India with the US East Coast but was suspended four months ago due to losses incurred by the shipping lines, according to sources.

The IEX direct weekly service “is in response to customers’ increased demands for a quality service to and from this fast-growing market, and to provide additional capacity from the US East Coast to India, Pakistan and Jeddah,” OOCL said.

The IEX service will commence on August 8 from Karachi. It will have a fixed weekly schedule with the port rotation as Karachi/Nhava Sheva/Mundra/Damietta/New York/Norfolk/Charleston/Port Said/Jeddah/Karachi. It is learnt that two or three other major shipping lines will be part of an alliance in this service.

The IDX service commenced in January 2007 but was suspended in March 2008 by the five partners, namely OOCL, Shipping Corporation of India, Emirates Shipping Line, Zim and Italia Marittima. The port rotation was Colombo/Tuticorin/Kochi/JNPT/Mundra/Barcelona/New York/Norfolk/Charleston/Barcelona and Colombo.

According to the 2007-08 annual report of the Department of the Shipping, Road Transport and Highways, since all the partners were incurring losses in the IDX service, Emirates and ZIM first withdrew one vessel each from the service.

SCI had to replace one vessel in the ISE (Indian sub-continent Europe) service and in spite of scouting in the market for a replacement vessel SCI was not able to get a ship from the IDX service. Due to losses, all the partners decided for an early termination of the IDX service.

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