Salalah announces new CMA CGM service calls


The Port of Salalah, an Arab Gulf region gateway port and transshipment hub on the Arabian Sea, has announced that French-based CMA CGM is expected to add two new weekly services to East Africa, and Europe, beginning the first week of December: the Noura Express and the EPIC service.

The Noura Express service, on the East Africa trade lane operates four vessels of up to 2,755 TEU capacity, linking the ports of Jebel Ali and Khor al Fakkan in the UAE, Mombasa, Kenya, Mogadishu, Somalia, and Salalah. At Salalah, transshipment is due to be available to CMA CGM’s Europe Pakistan India Consortium (EPIC) Service, which links ports in South Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and North Europe. The EPIC Service is operated with eight vessels of up to 9,400 TEU capacity.

Port of Salalah CEO David Gledhill said, “The introduction of the EPIC service to the Port of Salalah provides our growing customer base in Salalah with an additional opportunity for export to Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa, as well as for imports from the Indian Subcontinent” adding “the Noura Service call leverages the strategic location of Salalah to provide a new, fast cargo connection from East Africa to Europe, which can potentially be also used to accommodate Omani imports from Kenya and Somalia.”

Part of the APM Terminals Global Terminal Network, the port of Salalah is now undergoing an expansion which is due to double the quay length, and increase dry bulk capacity to 20m tons, and liquid bulk capacity to 6m tons annually. The Port of Salalah, in which APM Terminals operates and holds a 30% share, handled 3.03m TEUs in 2014, along with 7.9m tons of bulk cargo.