MSC’s worldwide box traffic soars

MSC’s worldwide box traffic soars    Mediterranean Shipping Co., the world’s second-largest container shipping line, carried about 27 percent more containers in 2004, when it moved 5.6 million full TEUs, compared with its 4.4-million worldwide traffic for 2003.
   The expansionist Geneva-based carrier has doubled its worldwide traffic in three years, from 2001 to 2004.
   2004 has seen MSC add services in the Asia-Europe, transpacific, Asia/South America and North America/South America trades, and introduce ships as large as 8,200 TEUs, into its Asia/California service, for the first time.
   MSC operates more than 255 container vessels with an intake capacity of 670,000 TEUs.
   In recent years MSC’s containership fleet has also expanded substantially, since 2003 making the company the second largest carrier after Maersk Sealand.
   MSC said that its “spectacular growth” has been achieved internally through organic growth rather than through acquisition or merger.