Rickmers wins AFSCA for Best Shipping Line in project cargo class
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
It is reported that Rickmers Linie has won the Best Shipping Line award in the Project Cargo category in the 2009 Asian Freight & Supply Chain Awards function here recently.
At a gala event, Ms Sylvia Mak manager of the Hong Kong representative office of Rickmers Linie, accepted the award from Mr Caesar Yiu, Thermo-King’s director for Global Leasing. Some 400 representatives from the shipping, transport and logistics industry participated in the event.
The AFSCAs involve key decision makers in the industry who take part in an independently verified process that comprises a nomination round and a voting round. Nominations were made by readers of Cargonews Asia who, to quote the publication's editor, Mr Greg Knowler, recognized the company’s excellence in its field.
However, Rickmers-Linie vessels are a common sight in Asia, especially those maintaining the company’s eastbound Pearl String Round the World service. This service links Europe, Asia and the US with a fleet of nine identical vessels, each equipped with twin 320 tonne cranes enabling them to lift indivisible loads of up to 640 tonne.
The concept of a regular liner service catering to project cargo, including heavy lift shipments was originally formulated by Rickmers in 2000 and the first ship entered service in 2002. Sailings are every 14 days and to ensure service integrity, Rickmers now employs a tenth vessel in this service, similar in design and fitted with twin 100 tonne cranes.
Given the regular sailings offered by Rickmers, project shippers can plan their shipments with much greater flexibility and know that a missed sailing is not critical since the next vessel in the schedule will be able to accommodate their cargo.
