The announcement of the Mærsk services, including weekly calls to and from the US, Middle East and north Europe, and APL’s West Asia Express call, followed hot on the heels of news that Mitsui OSK has also started a weekly Straits Express Service at PTP, calling at Japan and Hong Kong. Last month, Taiwanese shipping line Yang Ming commenced ad hoc calls at the port and is in negotiations to start regular calls, as is Japan’s K-Line. Eyes have increasingly been turning northwards from Singapore, a few miles away across the causeway from the south Malaysian port, as PTP’s trophy bag continues to swell with big names.

Eyebrows were particularly raised when the port announced it had bagged the weekly APL call. The operator started a Monday call on June 12 with one of the four 3,500 teu vessels deployed on the service rotating between Kaohsiung, Hong Kong and Colombo.

PTP, which officially opened on March 13, has been offering rates of up to 30 per cent less than its well-established southern neighbour in an attempt to lure away up to ten per cent of Singapore’s container throughput volumes. However, officials at PSA Corp refuse to allow their feathers to be ruffled by the upstart on their doorstep and speak diplomatically about their focus being "on customers and not competitors" and their ability to offer value-added services unavailable elsewhere.

PTP handled 36,686 TEU in the first quarter of this year and hopes to achieve 500,000 TEU for 2000 as a whole, according to PTP CEO Mohd Sidik Shaik Osman. "This figure will increase in 2001 as we build up our connectivity," he adds. "We have shipping lines now in advanced talks with PTP and hope that this will assist us in achieving our projected forecast. Also, as we establish our feeder connectivity, we believe that talks with other main lines and shipping lines will then increase."

Regional feeder Hub Line currently services the port but Sidik notes that the arrival of additional feeder links is a "chicken and egg situation" pending on the arrival of further main-line operators. "Ports covered are in the Indian Subcontinent, Indo-China region and, with MOL, the Far East. Plans to improve this network are ongoing and we also plan to increase the frequency. Building a network from zero-base will take time and PTP aims to have a fast-start with main lines handling transhipment. This, we are confident, will build up our base at a faster pace." He added that the strategy is to attract regional lines first and then move on to direct transhipment."

Sidik is ready to concede that half the port’s first-quarter volumes were made up of empties but denies that this will be a long-term trend. "Empties are an essential part of the transhipment business, especially for container imbalance areas, such as Johor [the southern Malaysian state where the port is located] where exports far exceed imports. We do not expect this ratio to continue when services are built up at PTP. Our target is to handle transhipment business and eventually, we expect at least 80 per cent of handling to be from transhipment."

PTP’s transhipment aspirations beg the question of how the new facility can possibly hope to fit into the already crowded regional hub port market. The mighty terminals of Singapore’s PSA Corp are just a few miles to the south and, on home turf, Malaysia’s other major greenfield hub port project Port Klang has long been lauded as the country’s ‘gateway port’ and is the great hope in the local port battle field. But Sidik is undeterred. "Container throughput in South-east Asia is growing and there is enough cargo volume for all existing ports. Port Klang and PTP serve different routes and cater towards different markets.

He states that Port Klang is backed by a mature hinterland complete with industrial areas, whereas PTP is in a better geographic position to act as a transhipment point. "Port Klang and PTP will together give the maximum benefit to the Malaysian economy," he said. "We have always had a problem of cargo leaking to other neighbouring ports and I do not think that Port Klang alone will be able to arrest this. PTP will be able to help and so fulfil government aspirations."