Rickmers-Linie launches new breakbulk service linking North Asia with South America and the US East Coast

News Release Rickmers-Linie GmbH & CIE. KG (Head Office) June 4, 2010

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4 June 2010 
Rickmers-Linie launches new breakbulk service linking 
North Asia with South America and the US East Coast

Rickmers-Linie, the breakbulk, heavylift and project cargo
specialist headquartered in Hamburg, has launched a new service linking North
Asia with South America and the US East Coast. Four vessels, each capable of
lifting 120-tonne indivisible loads and featuring stern ramps for rolling cargo,
will maintain the monthly schedule. 
Base ports covered by the "Rickmers NCS Service" are: 
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• Moji, Kobe, Yokohama and Nagoya in Japan; 
• Guayaquil in Ecuador, Cartagena, Santa Marta and Puerto
Bolivar in Colombia and Guanta in Venezuela; 
• Port-au-Prince in Haiti; 
• Savannah, Charleston and Philadelphia on the US East Coast.
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Additional ports can be called on inducement. In Asia, for
example, the schedule permits calls in Northern China (Shanghai – Dalian range)
and in South Korea. 
Rickmers sees this new service as complementing its existing
Pearl String vessels which sail eastbound and primarily link Japan, China and
Korea with the US Gulf on the transpacific leg of their fortnightly round-the
world schedule. 
Announcing the NCS service, Gerhard Janssen, Director Marketing
& Sales, Rickmers-Linie, stated: 
"The Pearl String ships are running full and the NCS service
brings us welcome additional possibilities to serve ports on the North Coast of
South America and the Caribbean." 
"On a more exciting note though, the NCS service takes us back
into the fast-developing South American market. We have in the past made calls
on inducement with the Pearl String service and have established contacts in
Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela and the Caribbean but we now have a distinct
service catering for ports on the Caribbean coastline of South America. Until
2001 we had been operating a monthly service between Europe and Brazil."

The NCS service will utilise four ships, three of 11,500dwt and
one of 13,000dwt. Being smaller than the 30,000dwt Pearl String ships, they have
the added advantage of being able to call at smaller, draught-restricted ports.

The four ships, Bright State, Del Sol, Fortune Epoch
and Reina Rosa, are Japanese-owned and have been chartered from Eastern Car Liner, Ltd
(ECL), Tokyo. 
Since 2006, Rickmers-Linie has deployed these vessels westbound
from the US to Asia. However, since October 2009, Rickmers-Linie has also
utilised them eastbound from Asia to the US Gulf & East Coast, with the
prime focus being on serving the needs of Japanese clients. 
Now Rickmers is adding regular calls in Ecuador, Colombia and
Venezuela, so creating a distinct new service that continues to serve the
requirements of the markets in Japan, Northern China and South Korea.
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