Aden- Overseas Port Management (OPM) Aden signed on Monday 9 Nov. 2005 a one- year Service Agreement with Cosco Container Lines Company Ltd (COSCON) at COSCON Dubai office.

Mr. Zhao Wei, Managing Director, COSCON West Asia and Mr. MMJ Subramaniam, CEO OPM Aden penned the landmark agreement.

This ceremony heralds the arrival of Cosco vessels at Aden Container Terminal (ACT) beginning from December 2005. Moreover, the Cosco containers will be the forerunners crossing the wharves of ACT from 23 November 2005 when vessels of its Far East-Red Sea (FRS) consortium partners, Evergreen and Hapag Lloyd, come in.

COSCON, winning the Shipping Line of the Year title on 3 November 2005 in the Asian Logistics Awards 2005, boasts of a 120-container vessels fleet with 300,000 TEU capacity including five 7500- TEU post panamax vessels. They are deployed on the group’s 60 international shipping routes linking 100 principal ports in more than 30 countries in Europe, America, Asia, Africa and Australia. Eight 10,000- TEU vessels, scheduled for delivery after 2007, will further strengthen the Cosco fleet with some of the largest container vessels in the world.

Aden has now becomes an integral node in Cosco’s FRS service in the network routing of Nansha-Hong Kong-Shekou-Tanjung Pelepas-Aden-Jeddah-Aqaba-Sokhna-Singapore-Nansha, a turnaround of 42 days. This new FRS weekly service is a result of the merger of two existing Red Sea services: the Far East-Red Sea service and the Straits-Red Sea Express service.

In line with its focus on market orientation and customer satisfaction, Cosco will add 11,000 -TEU to the container traffic of Aden each year.