Rickmers launches breakbulk service

Rickmers launches breakbulk service    Rickmers-Linie, the Hamburg-based breakbulk, heavy lift and project cargo specialist, has launched an eastbound transpacific service linking North Asia with South America and the U.S. East Coast.
   Four vessels, each capable of lifting 120 tons and featuring stern ramps for rolling cargo, will maintain a monthly schedule.
   Base ports covered by the Rickmers NCS Service are: Moji, Kobe, Yokohama and Nagoya in Japan; Guayaquil in Ecuador; Cartagena, Santa Marta and Puerto Bolivar in Colombia; Guanta in Venezuela; Port-au-Prince in Haiti, and Savannah, Charleston and Philadelphia on the U.S. East Coast.
   Additional ports can be called on inducement, the company said. In Asia, for example, the schedule permits calls in northern China (Shanghai-Dalian range) and in South Korea.
   Rickmers sees this new service as complementing its existing Pearl String vessels, which sail eastbound and primarily link Japan, China and Korea with the U.S. Gulf on the transpacific leg of their fortnightly round-the world schedule.
   'The Pearl String ships are running full and the NCS service brings us welcome additional possibilities to serve ports on the North Coast of South America and the Caribbean,” said Gerhard Janssen, director marketing and sales at Rickmers-Linie.
   'On a more exciting note though, the NCS service takes us back into the fast-developing South American market. We have in the past made calls on inducement with the Pearl String service and have established contacts in Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and the Caribbean, but we now have a distinct service catering for ports on the Caribbean coastline of South America,” he said. “Until 2001 we had been operating a monthly service between Europe and Brazil.'
   The NCS service will utilize four ships, three — Del Sol, Fortune Epoch and Reina Rosa — with 11,500-deadweight-ton capacity, and one, Bright State, sized at 13,000 dwt. Being smaller than the 30,000 dwt Pearl String ships, they will be able to call at smaller ports with shallower channels.
   Rickmers said the ships, Japanese-owned and chartered from Eastern Car Liner Ltd., have been deployed westbound from the United States to Asia since 2006. However, since October 2009, Rickmers-Linie has also utilized them eastbound from Asia to the U.S. Gulf and East coasts, primarily serving Japanese clients. Now it said it plans to add regular calls in Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, creating a distinct new service that continues to serve the requirements of the markets in Japan, Northern China and South Korea. ' Chris Dupin