The 30 per cent increase in the handling of container transhipment is expected to help PTP maintain its position as the fastest rising port in the world.

 

Chief executive of Tanjung Pelepas Sdn Bhd Mohd Sidik Shaik Osman said the expected contribution from Evergreen was based on its annual handling of 1.2 million TEUs previously from the port in Singapore.

“With the expected recovery in the economy this year, we are estimating that PTP will be handling at least 2.5 million TEUs and might even reach 2.7 million TEUs,” he said.

Evergreen, which signed a service agreement with PTP on April 1, is expected to begin its operations from PTP the latest by the third quarter of this year. The move is expected to save the Taiwan-based shipping company a total of RM21.66 million a year. Other shipping companies carrying out their operations from the port include the world’s largest shipping company, Maersk Sealand, which had also transferred its operations from Singapore’s port.

Asked if PTP had gained Evergreen’s entry to the port via a healthy competition, Mohd Sidik said that the competition had been a fair one.

“Shipping and port are highly competitive industries. Industry participants would need to decide wisely based on which port offered the most cost-effective service for them. The decision has been made (by Evergreen) that PTP offered the best in that area.”

He said the shipping industry was a large industry that required detailed and comprehensive planning and costing. “Before a large organisation takes on a major decision like moving from one port to to another, they would study in detail if the new port would be able to handle their large number of containers.
That would be the first question besides the cost and other factors,” he said.

He said Evergreen had made its decision only after having studied and assessed PTP’s capacity and ability to handle their containers.

Besides the two major shipping companies, there are seven other world leading shipping companies using the 2.16km long PTP built on an area covering 780ha and equipped with modern facilities including 14 units of Super Post Panamax cranes.

Asked what impact the entry of leading shipping companies to the port would have on Malaysia’s economy and in particular Johor, Mohd Sidik said the impact would be big and would benefit the country as a port was not just a matter of an infrastructure but also an economic moving factor. He said he was also confident that Malaysia would emerge as a leading centre for shipping activities in the region in the near future.

“Malaysia, with the support from the Government and the Transport Ministry, has made the port operations sector a success and indeed the privatization of ports has been one of the most successful moves,” he said.
Two or three years ago, exporters in Johor did not have a transport network that directly linked them with ports in Europe or the US but today there are weekly services for them to export their products to those places or import from various parts of the world, he added