[ KMTC Reshuffles Korea-Japan Container Transport Services ]

KMTC(Korea Marine Transport Co.), which provides container transport s
ervices between Korea to Japan, has reshuffled the trade’s Seto Inlan
d Sea and Sea of Japan service setups. The company has been providing
the Seto Inland Sea service on four separate routes. Kanto route:Tokyo
-Yokohama-Chiba-Nagoya-Tokushima and Ulsan-Pusan served with three 342
TEU vessels;Sky Duke, Sunny Maple and Sunny Palm, Kansai route : Kobe
-Osaka-Fukuyama and Ulsan-Pusan with two vessels; the 270-TEU Sunny Ro
se and the 244-TEU Global Success; Fukuyama-Takamatsu-Pusan route with
the 140TEU Colover, and Takamatsu-Hiroshima-Pusan route, also with t
he Clover.
In this service reorganization, KMTC has not only dropped the Tokushim
a service out of the Kanto route and the the Fukuyama service from the
Kansai route, but has also restructured the existing four-route servi
ce set-up into the following two vessels operated on a twice-weekly ba
sis(no changes have been effected in the service details of the Kanto
and Kansai routes except for the deletion of the Tokushima and Fukuyam
a calls): the Takamatsu-Fukuyama-Tokushima-Hiroshima-Pusan route;serve
d with the 140TEU Clover and Tokushima-Takamatsu-Fukuyama-Hiroshima-Pu
san route;served with the 150TEU Cosmos.
With the service restructuring in place, not only has the transit time
of the Korea/Japan route been reduced, but Tokushima and Hiroshima ar
e now served twice-weekly.
In Japan service between Naoetsu, Toyamashinko, Kanazawa and Pusan, KM
TC has replaced the 150TEU Cosmos with the larger 342TEU Sunny Olive,
and has also added Niigata calls.
The new port-of-call rotation in the new service set-up is Niigata, Na
oetsu, Toyamashinko, Kanazawa and Pusan.
As a result of these service improvements, Niigata is now served three
vessels: the newly deployed 342TEU Sunny Olive plus the 330TEU Sunny
Laurel operated in a rotation of Niigata, Naoetsu, Toyama and Pusan an
d with the 156TEU Haewoo Frontier in a rotation of Niigata and Pusan.