[091111.EN.SEA] Maersk, CMA CGM, Safmarine flee Tanger-Med's Labour Chaos For Other Ports

MONTHS of industrial labour unrest and poor productivity at the Tanger-Med in Morocco have induced carriers to transship cargo from elsewhere, where much Asian cargo is picked up by other ships for east coast North American, West and southern Africa.

Maersk and its unit, Safmarine have cancelled calls at their own Maersk Group-owned APM Terminal, shifting to Spain's Algeciras and Malaga, reported London's Containerisation International. Marseilles-based CMA CGM has diverted from Tanger Med to transship via Marsaxlokk in Malta, reports Alphaliner.

Said AMP Terminals chief operations officer Dennis Lenthe Olesen: "There has been ongoing disruption from the labour force for the past 10 months. Productivity rates have slipped from 30 containers per crane hour to only 10 moves per hour.

"When the terminal is running we are now back up to 20-25 moves per crane per hour but we are handling much smaller volumes of cargo and our customers have decided that because the platform is not stable enough to build reliable relay/mainline services, to move out."

CMA CGM started to use Tanger as a hub in October 2008 to handle cargo at the Tanger-Med Terminal 2 which is run by a consortium comprising Eurogate (40 per cent), MSC (20 per cent), CMA CGM and its Moroccan subsidiary CoMaNav (40 per cent).

Source : HKSG, 08.11.11.