JEDDAH – Danish container carrier Maersk Line plans to increase its port calls in Saudi Arabia to 750 this year compared with 450 in 2010, said Sunil Joseph, Managing Director of Maersk Line in Saudi Arabia. "Exports and imports have grown more than 15 percent year on year because of the country's huge potential and Maersk is looking forward to assisting the growth and development of the trade in the Kingdom," he said. As delays in delivery schedules mean losses to the business at large, Maersk Line will continue to go the extra mile to ensure schedule integrity and reliability, he added. Even during periods of heavy port congestion across the country, Maersk Line has maintained on-time vessel arrivals and departures at accuracy levels of over 90 percent. Customers have appreciated that the transportation time on Maersk Line vessels has not been impacted negatively. “Regardless of the point of origin, Maersk Line offers the most consistent and reliable schedules for delivery of perishable cargo in Saudi Arabia. This represents a significant advantage over competition,” the report quotes Bill Walker, head of Supply Chain and Operations at Mohammed Abdullah Sharbatly, the largest fruit consignee in the Kingdom, as saying. In addition to its product offerings and transit times, Maersk Line has observed high wastage in the shipping industry in Saudi Arabia. For instance, space on vessels is not utilized to its full potential as a large number of bookings for “reserved space” by customers are not realized. The container turn time and free time is much longer than in neighboring markets. Additionally, availability of equipment is a challenge due to the east-west imbalance, and the process of positioning empty equipment is long and cumbersome. There are fewer direct products in the Saudi market with rates being far less than in neighboring markets which offer higher returns on investment. – SG
