French container ship docks at Koja

French container ship docks at Koja

JAKARTA (JP): CMA CGM, a major French shipping line, launched
on Tuesday the service of its 4,000 20-foot equivalent units
(TEUs) container ship to meet the growing demand of the country's
exporters.

Ronald Manurung, general manager of CMA CGM Indonesia, said
the Ville de' Orion, the largest cargo ship serving Indonesia,
would serve the Koja container terminal at Tanjung Priok Port
once a week.

The US$70 million, 259-meter-long ship will serve ports
between Indonesia and North Asia, then sail to the west coast of
the United States.

"We are confident of being the pioneer serving Jakarta with
the latest generation of full container vessels, unlike all our
competitors who use Singapore as a port of transshipment", said
Ronald.

Ronald said the French shipping line, which at present calls
11 times at Indonesian container terminals a month, carried
62,200 containers of TEU capacity to and from Indonesia last
year.

"We hope we will be able to carry 80,000 TEUs this year," he
said.

Koja Container Port, which is operated by PT Humpus Terminal
Peti Kemas, handled 500,000 TEUs this year, an increase of 25
percent from 400,000 TEUs in 1999 and 300,000 TEUs in 1998, the
port's deputy general manager Ferdy B. Madian said.

Several major shipping lines such as NYK, PSK, Norasia and
Mitsui OSK also use the container port.

He said that loading and unloading activities from the ships
still ran smoothly because the port's occupancy rate was still
below 70 percent. (07)