Portugal, Slovenia seek direct shipping route to Bangladesh

M Shahjahan, chairman of the Chittagong Port Authority (CPA), told an English-language daily in the country that through the shipping ministry, embassy officials of Portugal and Slovenia separately sought virtual meetings with the CPA to launch direct shipping services with Chittagong port.

Shahjahan said he gave the same proposal to Anne Van Leeuwen, ambassador of the Netherlands to Bangladesh, and Danish ambassador Winnie Estrup Peterson, and both seemed positive in their response.

Export cargo from the country has so far been transported to Europe, the US and other destinations through four regional transhipment ports, including Colombo and Singapore as well as Tanjung Pelepas and Port Klang of Malaysia and some ports in China, by connecting to bigger mother vessels.

As both the time and cost in transporting in this way is more, businesses have long been seeking direct shipping services.

But the low draft in Chittagong Port that makes it difficult to accommodate big mother vessels remains the main obstacle to materialising their hopes.

However, an Italian freight forwarder, RifLine Worldwide Logistics Limited, with the help of its shipping concern Kalypso Compagnia di Navigazione SPA of Italy, has already launched direct services on the Italy-Chattogram route by deploying two smaller container vessels.

Under the service, Liberian flagged MV Songa Cheetah arrived here from the Italian port of Ravenna on February 5 and left two days later, taking away 952 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of export-laden containers.

Malta-flagged MV AST Malta is now en route from China and is expected to arrive in Chattogram on March 2 to take some export cargoes to the Italian port of Ravenna. The vessel is one of two vessels operated by RifLine Worldwide on its direct service between China and Ravenna.

ALCHEMPro News Desk (DS)