RCL's India service gets rid of detentions

Regional Container Line (RCL, general agent in South Korea: Woori shipping) is starting on-time services for Singapore and India trade by deploying its own vessels.

RCL had been searching for slots from other shipping companies to carry cargoes in the trade, however, in a turn about this year, as export and import cargoes through India jumped by three fold, the shipping company decided to operate its own vessels in the trade.

The 450 TEU container vessels, the "M/V Hansewall", the "M/V Marclipper" and the "M/V Osg Argosy" are scheduled to depart Singapore from September 21.

The port rotation is as follows: Singapore - Port Kelang - Nahva Sheva - Bombay - Port Kelang - Singapore.

"Given out-dated container facilities at Indian ports, severe weather in the Bay of Bengal, and an imbalance of inbound and outbound cargoes, in the past we had preferred to charter slots as opposed to deploying our own vessels. However, coming into this year, inbound and outbound cargoes in India showed steep increases as much as three times the previous year's. This put up the question of difficulties in not being able to handle all of these cargoes through chartered capacities," said a high official at Woori shipping. They also anticipated that in their vessel deployments there would be fewer cargo detentions at Indian ports than there were in the process of chartering slots from other shipping companies.

Based on this plan, there would be a fixed day on-time service such as an every Sunday arrival in Nahva Sheva and an every Monday calling in Bombay. This service also could prove to be 5 to 10 days faster than the service before it deployed its own vessels. Transit times would take 19 days. Service from Pusan departs every Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday just as before and will be transit on Singapore .