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Santanu Sanyal

Kolkata , April 12

Shipping Corporation of India (SCI), which stopped offering services to the East Coast of the US a little less than a year ago, will resume the services shortly, mostly from May 24.

"This time we have teamed up with new partners to offer the US East Coast services," Mr S. Hajara, Chairman and Managing Director of SCI, told Business Line.

The new partners are Zim, the Israeli line; McAndrews, the subsidiary of CMA CGM; and Emirates Shipping. In all, eight vessels, each of the capacity of 2,600 TEUs, will be pressed into service.

While Zim will offer three vessels, SCI and Emirates Shipping two each and McAndrews one. The service will be offered on a weekly basis.

More on cards

"We will consider deploying higher capacity vessels depending on how the business grows," said Mr Hajara.

The port rotation is yet to be finalised. Unlike the previous service, more than one Indian port might be covered under the proposed service.

The Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, of course, will be there but the decision on the second Indian port is yet to be firmed up.

Also, this time, unlike the previous service, it might not be a direct sailing to the US East Coast ports. It could be the India-Mediterranean-US East Coast. However, the details are being finalised.

Till July last year, SCI, as a member of the Indamex (India-East Coast of US) consortium, offered services to the US east coast ports of New York, Norfolk and Charleston.

The other members of the consortium were APL, Contship and CMA CHM. The service was launched in 2000 but SCI joined it much later.

SCI was forced to withdraw from Indamex because of non-availability of tonnage. The 3,500-TEU Mercure was the last vessel the line had operated on the route. The charter contract expired in June and SCI could not locate another vessel to fill the gap.

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