SHIPPING

RCL expands services to Colombo

Regional Container Lines (RCL) has announced that it will offer a new RPI Westbound and Eastbound service, making double calls at Colombo to cater to the growing markets in

Sri Lanka from March 1.

Founded in 1979, RCL is a Thai based container shipping line which was public listed on the Thai Stock Exchange since 1988.

Its core business is in the carriage of Shipper owned containers (or SOC) and its own Carrier owned containers (or COC) within a service network that is fully Asia centric.

RCL currently owns and operates a fleet of 43 vessels with sizes ranging between 500 TEUs to 2732 TEUs, with a fleet of 79,854 TEUs to support its own COC carriage as well.

It also operates a network of 59 offices made up of both owned and agency offices to support its service structure.

RCL is today recognized as amongst the leading SOC and Intra Asia COC operators by both peers and customers alike.

RCL is represented in Sri Lanka by Delmege Forsyth & Co. (Shipping) Ltd., one of the oldest shipping agencies in Sri Lanka with a long and illustrious history in the sphere of Shipping Agency business.

The new RPI (RCL Pakistan India) Westbound service will call Colombo (JCT) every Tuesday enroute to Nhava Sheva (JNPT) and Karachi (PICT) on a fixed day service, while the Eastbound service will call Colombo (JCT) every Friday enroute to Port Klang and Singapore on a fixed day service.

RCL's current RKI (RCL Korea India) Eastbound service calls Colombo (JCT) every Sunday enroute to Port Klang, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Ningbo.

With these three weekly services calling Colombo, RCL will be accepting Import and Export cargos from and to all ports of Australia, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China,Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Philippines Indonesia, Hong Kong Singapore, Malaysia, India and Pakistan. RCL will also be offering slots for SOC containers to the Mainline and NVOCC customers from and to Karachi, Nhava Sheva, Port Klang and Singapore for local and transshipment cargos on these sailings via Colombo.

Yachts, pirates and navies, a fatal cocktail

Hijacking yachts has often earned Somalia's ransom-hunting pirates more trouble than cash but two more captures within a week show that the Indian Ocean's buccaneers cannot resist an easy catch.

When the pirates' boarding units, dodging gun-bristling warships to prowl the ocean for vulnerable prey, encounter lone bobbing tourists defying security advisories to rally their destination, they cannot believe their luck.

"We don't look for such small boats and when we see them, we are surprised," said Ahmed, a pirate from Hobyo, the central Somali lair where most of the 40-plus captured vessels are being held.

The latest case was on February 24 when pirates captured a circumnavigating Danish family on their sailing yacht - the S/Y ING - off the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea.

Jan Quist Johansen, his wife and three teenage children, had been sailing around the world with two Danish employees since 2009 and set off from the Maldives on February 11.

According to Ecoterra International, an NGO monitoring maritime activity in the region, the yacht has been commandeered and is heading towards the northeastern tip of the semi-autonomous region of Puntland.

Less than a week before the Danes were seized, sea-jackers captured the S/Y Quest, a yacht of retired American bible ministers, in what one pirate boss had described to AFP at the time as "a big catch".

While most of pirates' catches are insured merchant vessels on which crews stay locked up until a ransom is agreed with the owner, the seizure of yachts tends to jam the pirates' well-oiled extortion machine.

"It's true that yachts can give us headaches, we have had complications... It makes the navies nervous, the ransoms take forever because nobody wants to pay," said Ahmed.

In the case of the S/Y Quest, US navies shadowing the hijacked yacht found all four crew already dead by the time they launched a rescue operation in which two pirates were shot dead and others detained.

In 2009, French commandos launched an operation to free a couple with their small baby that killed at least two pirates but also left the father dead.

"If you look at the statistics, yacht hijackings result in a high number of deaths and are rarely a success for anybody, including the pirates who don't always think of what they're getting themselves into," said a Western intelligence official.

Merchant vessels often carry millions worth of cargo and are owned and operated by large multinational maritime groups, but in the case of a private yacht, the hostages' lives becomes the pirates' only bargaining chip.

Yachts are too small to hold large groups of pirates and crews are often brought to shore, creating different dynamics during the ransom negotiations.

"A sailing boat crew plus a pirate guard team of 12 to 16 people is simply not doable on a sailing boat. Bringing them on land adds a lot of challenges both to the pirates and to the hostages," said Denmark-based Risk Intelligence managing director Hans Tino Hansen.

Paul and Rachel Chandler, a retired British couple from Kent whose yacht was hijacked in 2009, became perhaps the most publicised piracy victims since the phenomenon surged off the Somali coast in 2007.

A year into the hostage crisis and with talks making little progress, the Chandlers' captors themselves admitted they were "fed up" and ready to accept a ransom that would simply cover their costs.

But despite the travel warnings that have been sent out across the yachting community to avoid the entire area at all costs, a few dyed-in-the-wool yachtsmen continue to sail close to the wind.

And pirates will continue to risk incurring the wrath of the anti-piracy armada simply because yachts are like a gaping handbag to a pickpocket. "They are easy targets, it's worth taking them," said Ahmed. AFP

ICS promotes shipping education, training

Gayan KANCHANA

Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers Sri Lanka (ICS) -Sri Lanka Branch held its seventeenth annual award ceremony recently in Colombo.

Prof Gunapala Nanayakkara delivered the keynote address. He said: "It's time to show what Sri Lanka is truly capable of. Last thirty years we had many problems. Now we have solved much but now the main problem is lack of professionals and professionals as leaders. They are called professional leaders. Professional leaders can go beyond the standards and they can set new standards as well. Professional leaders train and educate their team members. "Future professional leaders in the shipping industry should act more efficiently because today Sri Lanka is not using the sea around the country as it should use. Most people in the country still think that the sea is only for fishing," he said.

"Shipping should be one of the most important priorities of our development. One third of our economy depends on international trade and investments. With the new ports constructing and expansions we will have a great opportunities in the future," he said.

ICS UK Chairman Karl Franz said ICS Sri Lankan branch is a role model to follow for other ICS branches around the world because it's performing quite well. ICS Sri Lanka Chairman Maxwell de Silva said Institute has been actively involved in promoting shipping education and industry in Sri Lanka.

"We see great opportunities in the country in the field of shipping," he said.

ICS is a provider of education and training, for its memberships in the shipping industry with highly qualified professionals.ICS is the only internationally recognized professional body in the maritime arena and it represents shipbrokers, ship managers and agents throughout the world. With 24 branches in key shipping areas, 3,500 individuals and 120 company members, the institute's membership represents a commitment to maintaining the highest professional standards across the shipping industry.