The Contship Italia-run Cagliari International Container Terminal, left empty after Maersk Line’s decision to abandon the facility earlier this year, has been pulled back from the brink via a new contract with the Grand Alliance.
“From September 13, commercial activity will start again in Cagliari, which will thus reassume its strategic role in the Mediterranean,” Italian transport and infrastructure minister Altero Matteoli said.
He added that the revival of the facility meant that 205 direct workers and 500 sub-contractors would return to work as a result of the deal, a vital boost for the long-embattled economy of southern Sardinia.
Industry sources said the Grand Alliance saw Cagliari as “an opportunity, a state-of-the-art facility in a good location which had the additional advantage of not being over-populated” with other companies.
That is a knowing understatement. Maersk’s departure in April left the facility all-but-empty and as talks with other lines, notably CMA-CGM, failed to bear fruit, there were genuine fears for its future.
Maersk has also sold to Contship the 23% stake in the facility that it inherited with its acquisition of P&O Nedlloyd, thus making a clean break with CICT.
The terms of the arrangement between Contship and the Grand Alliance, which includes Hapag-Lloyd, MISC, NYK and OOCL, were not available. But the deal will at least see big boxships returning to CICT, reaffirming in the process the terminal’s long history of defying the odds.
The sources added that throughput was likely to rise relatively quickly over the coming months towards an initial target of 400,000 teu, and that further growth was anticipated along with a buoyant market.
“The whole intra-Mediterranean market is booming. It is the only market where volumes are steadily increasing and where rates are at an acceptable level,” they said.
The partners are currently putting together a network of feeder services “similar to that existing at Gioia Tauro”.
“The main third-party feeder suppliers are all convinced of the ineluctibility of calls into Cagliari. They will follow the cargo.”
“From September 13, commercial activity will start again in Cagliari, which will thus reassume its strategic role in the Mediterranean,” Italian transport and infrastructure minister Altero Matteoli said.
He added that the revival of the facility meant that 205 direct workers and 500 sub-contractors would return to work as a result of the deal, a vital boost for the long-embattled economy of southern Sardinia.
Industry sources said the Grand Alliance saw Cagliari as “an opportunity, a state-of-the-art facility in a good location which had the additional advantage of not being over-populated” with other companies.
That is a knowing understatement. Maersk’s departure in April left the facility all-but-empty and as talks with other lines, notably CMA-CGM, failed to bear fruit, there were genuine fears for its future.
Maersk has also sold to Contship the 23% stake in the facility that it inherited with its acquisition of P&O Nedlloyd, thus making a clean break with CICT.
The terms of the arrangement between Contship and the Grand Alliance, which includes Hapag-Lloyd, MISC, NYK and OOCL, were not available. But the deal will at least see big boxships returning to CICT, reaffirming in the process the terminal’s long history of defying the odds.
The sources added that throughput was likely to rise relatively quickly over the coming months towards an initial target of 400,000 teu, and that further growth was anticipated along with a buoyant market.
“The whole intra-Mediterranean market is booming. It is the only market where volumes are steadily increasing and where rates are at an acceptable level,” they said.
The partners are currently putting together a network of feeder services “similar to that existing at Gioia Tauro”.
“The main third-party feeder suppliers are all convinced of the ineluctibility of calls into Cagliari. They will follow the cargo.”