Throughput at the Cai Mep International Terminal in Vietnam, an APM Terminals facility, surged 130 percent year-over-year to 277,303 TEUs during the first quarter of 2016 thanks to the addition of five new ocean liner service calls.
The Cai Mep International Terminal (CMIT), located in the Ba Ria‐Vung Tau Province of Vietnam, southeast of Ho Chi Minh City, saw container volumes more than double in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015, according to data released by the terminal.
Throughput at the APM Terminals facility surged 130 percent year-over-year to 277,303 TEUs for the quarter thanks to the addition of five new ocean liner service calls. The strong quarterly growth follows an 80 percent increase in container traffic at CMIT to 724,768 TEUs in 2015 compared with the previous year.
“One of the factors that has supported the increase in new service calls has been the consistent improvement in local transportation infrastructure, which has reduced the time necessary for trucking containers from the port area through to Ho Chi Minh City to approximately 90 minutes, as opposed to three hours just two years ago,” CMIT Managing Director Robert Hambleton said in a statement.
CMIT said the new services now calling there include loops operated by the Ocean3 Alliance of CMA CGM, China Shipping (CSCL) and United Arab Shipping Co. (UASC) linking Vietnam with the U.S. East and West Coasts as well as Northern Europe, and the CKYHE Alliance, comprised, at present, of COSCO, “K” Line, Yang Ming, Hanjin Shipping and Evergreen Line, with service to North Europe. MCC, the regional Asian subsidiary of Maersk Line, has also added a new intra-Asia to the list of loops calling CMIT.
According to ocean carrier schedule and capacity database BlueWater Reporting, a total of 17 liner services currently call at the port of Cai Mep. As the chart below illustrates, 11 of those loops are direct region-to-region services, while the remaining six only call other ports in the Asia Pacific region.
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Vietnam’s economy is one of the fastest-growing in Asia, according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF’s April Regional Survey projected the Vietnamese economy would expand by 6.3 percent in 2016 and an additional 6.2 percent the following year. By comparison, the fund forecasted growth rates for China of 6.5 percent and 6.2 percent in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
In August of 2015, the European Union and Vietnam signed the principles of a Free Trade Agreement which would eliminate tariffs, and open Vietnamese markets to EU food products, as well as reduce non-tariff barriers to EU exports, and open Vietnam to European service providers, including ocean carriers. Vietnam is also a member of the recently negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership, which also includes the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and Peru as signatories.
Vietnamese ports handled a combined 10.6 million TEUs in 2015, 16 percent more than in 2014, according to CMIT, and more than two thirds of those volumes (7.2 million TEUs) were handled by facilities in the Saigon area.
“We will continue to work closely with the Vietnamese Ministries of Transport, Finance and Planning and Investment to ensure dredging and other port-associated infrastructure requirements are in place, as well as with the shipping lines seeking the productivity and efficiency that we can provide, as Vietnam continues to become an increasingly important global trading partner,” said Hambleton.