CMA CGM starts intra-Black Sea, intra-Baltic Sea weekly services

Marseilles’ shipping giant, CMA CGM, has reportedly announced it will launch a new Black Sea-Azov weekly service with 300-TEU ships after the New Year though the terminal in Novorossiysk has not yet been chosen.
According to Exim News Service, the new service expects to handle the growing volume of traffic between Russia and Turkey, including the cargo flows to the Krasnodar Territory and the Rostov Region, as well as other regions of Central Russia.
The rotation will be Constanza, Istanbul, Novorossiysk, Taganrog and back to Constanza.
CMA CGM has also launched a new feeder service from Hamburg to the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda and on to Kaliningrad with the 698-TEU Ice Bird on November 18, that will call at Hamburg terminals weekly.
Transhipment between Hamburg and Russian Baltic Sea ports amounted to 165,000 TEUs in the first half of the year, making Russia the third most important trading partner for Hamburg’s transhipment traffic.
CMA CGM has re-declared that it expects "positive operational results" in November and December, in line with the company’s forecasts in September.
A statement from the world’s third-largest shipping line was largely a repeat of what the company said last month. It again credited its cost-cutting plan, the closing of secondary lines to concentrate volumes on the main lines, allowing the group to deploy vessels that more closely matched demand.
Add to that, the company said, an increase in "strategic partnerships" has also helped with the aim of improving service quality and rationalising operating costs.
A company statement said, Asia-Europe lines have been profitable since October and the company expects other lines to reach break-even point by the end of the year, with operating profits expected in 2010.

(Source: Transport Weekly)