“When a terminal can produce more than 300 moves an hour, that falls into the very impressive category. We just look forward to challenging PTP with continuing additional growth and more exciting volumes,” he told the Business Times, declining to release any figures.

Lund said Maersk was confident of growing its cargo volumes at both Singapore's PSA Corp and its hub at PTP, and said its relationship with the citystate had mended in the three years since its shock move across the Causeway.

PSA counted Maersk as its biggest customer before the latter shifted its Southeasia Asia transhipment hub and millions of containers to PTP in December 2000.

The move captured the headlines, propelled the previously unknown Malaysian port from an empty new terminal into a serious competitive threat and ultimately led to an overhaul of PSA's management and customer approach.

“We obviously have a great working relationship with PSA and we would like to retain that as it is,” Lund said, adding Maersk's volumes had grown both in Singapore and Malaysia.

“We will continue to use both PSA and Pelepas in the future and that will not change. We'd like to see growth in both the areas,” he added.

Describing the fallingout with PSA as “uninteresting history”, he said PSA and Maersk had again developed a “good relationship” that had come about in “the course of normal business discussions.”

“Both parties are meeting regularly to focus on the operational aspects of the business, to be sure that the nuts and bolts of what we're doing together works, and that our services are meeting with a service level by PSA that we require to (work) effectively here in Singapore.

PSA has responded very well to that.
“The two parties evidently have an interest in improving on what you dubbed a 'not optimal' relationship, and making it the great relationship it was,” he said.

Lund said Singapore remains the shipping giant's Asia headquarters and that Maersk currently operates three mainline services each week through PSA. – Bernama