The Hindu Business Line : SCI, Rickmers in talks for service from India to UK

Performance
Rickmers vessels performed 14 voyages (all eastbound) in the current fiscal, as against 11 in 2004-05.
SCI's cargo lifting on Rickmers Line vessel also increased from 23,400 tonnes in 2004-05 to 31,000 tonnes in 2005-06.

Mumbai March 13

, Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) is in talks with Rickmers Lines of Germany to offer liner services for westbound trade in the break-bulk segment from India to ports in the United Kingdom.

Authoritative sources say that Rickmers has proposed to start a liner service for westbound sector from India to the UK ports. "SCI is considering the possibility of extending a joint service with Rickmers for westbound trade in this sector," according to the sources.

SCI is the only Indian shipping company that operates liner cargo services, involving a large number of shippers and correspondingly large number of consignees. The presence of SCI in the liner service has significantly acted as a moderating factor on the shipping rates, which would have been otherwise solely dictated by the foreign shipping lines.

Time-charters

With both the SCI-owned vessels, m.v. Vishvakarma and m.v. State of Nagaland, employed on time charter in the last two years, the company did not undertake any liner voyage on the India-UK break-bulk sector.

SCI's cargoes were carried on Rickmers Line vessels from ports in the UK to India under a joint service agreement. Rickmers vessels performed 14 voyages (all eastbound) in the current fiscal, as against 11 in 2004-05. SCI's cargo lifting on Rickmers Line vessel also increased from 23,400 tonnes in 2004-05 to 31,000 tonnes in 2005-06 and due to this increase, there has been a rise in its freight earnings by 22.78 per cent.

"Now with Rickmers proposing to start a liner service for westbound sector from India to the UK ports, SCI is also considering the scope for extending a joint service for the westbound trade, as there is a demand for such a service," a source said.

To more destinations

Apart from this, SCI is also considering extending its operations in the break-bulk segment through joint service agreements for shipment of such cargoes on the Far East sector, covering ports such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Colombo.

In this segment, SCI is providing coverage for the cargoes generating from the UK and Israel to India for the Ministry of Defence and PSUs such as BHEL, SAIL and ONGC. The company also provided coverage for cargoes of the Ministry of Defence by deploying two sailings from the US to India this fiscal — one of them was in June 2005 and the other in February this year.

The shipping company has further extended the coverage of various break-bulk cargoes of the PSUs and the Ministry of Defence on space charter basis from Black Sea ports of Illychevsk, Bourgas and Novorossisk.

In the current fiscal, SCI has carried a total of 6,550 freight tones on six separate space charter arrangements, the latest being on vessel, m.v. Lynx, earlier this month.

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