Maritime transport: Cosco Shipping opens a new branch in Morocco and announces future lines to Tanger Med and Agadir
By Ibrahima DIALLO
February 2, 2024 / 15:07 p.m.

Chinese container ship operator Cosco Shipping Lines opened its new Cosco Shipping Lines Morocco branch in Casablanca on Thursday, February 1, to provide services to its customers and promote trade between Morocco and its various partners. The shipping company plans to launch future lines that will serve the ports of Tangier Med and Agadir by the end of 2024.

Chinese shipping company Cosco Shipping Lines confirms its ambitions in Morocco. The world's fourth largest container shipping operator opened its new Cosco Shipping Lines Morocco branch in Casablanca on Thursday, February 1, in the presence of Li Changlin, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of China to Morocco. This SARL, headed by Lu Yuxin, replaces its former structure Cosmo Shipping & Logistics, which has been present in the Kingdom since 2015.

More than two-thirds of the capital of the new company is held by Cosco Shipping Lines and the rest by Michael Duhamel, founder of Cosmo Shipping & Logistics. "We decided to create this new company to deliver services to our customers and promote trade between Morocco and its various partners," Lu Yuxin said in a statement to Le360.

According to him, the Kingdom occupies a strategic position in global maritime transport, as an obligatory passage point for east-west and north-south routes.

For Wang Mingfeng, President of Cosco Shipping Europe, who attended the ceremony, "there is enormous growth potential for Morocco and our customers in the coming years, as North Africa, and Morocco in particular, will be a key target for the global coverage of our shipping lines."

Of course, the impact of the current crisis in the Red Sea on the activities of the Chinese shipowner could not be ignored. Le360 therefore took this opportunity to question Lu Yuxin and Michael Duhamel on this issue.

"Cosco Shipping is being hit in the same way as other shipping companies by the current crisis in the Red Sea. Nevertheless, we are achieving a stabilisation of freight rates and services and we hope for a return to normal fairly quickly," they stress.

Two future connections to Tanger Med and Agadir

Michael Duhamel acknowledges that "all shipping companies have been forced to increase their rates due to the operational costs generated by rotation changes", but he is currently seeing "a reduction in rates from Asia to Europe and the Mediterranean, which should continue after the Chinese New Year".

Cosco Shipping Lines Morocco seems to be moving towards the creation of new maritime links to other Moroccan ports, apart from Casablanca, which concentrates the majority of its activities in the Kingdom. "With the new team of Cosco Shipping Lines Morocco, we will try to convince the Chinese top management to invest more, by the end of 2024, in new lines that will serve the ports of Tangier Med and Agadir where there is significant potential for the transport of refrigerated containers of Moroccan agricultural products, through our European subsidiary Diamond Line," he announced.

Let us recall that Cosco Shipping Lines launched, at the end of August last year, a Turkey-Spain-Morocco maritime line, which connects the Spanish ports of Barcelona and Valencia, those of Piraeus and Thessaloniki in Greece, the Turkish ports of SafiPort, Gemlik, Aliaga and the port of Casablanca.

The new line offers, in particular, an express connection between Casablanca and Valencia, with a transit time of one day, and is distinguished by a fast connection, of only three days, between Barcelona and Piraeus, as well as by the wide coverage of destinations, from this Greek port, to continental Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.

Elimane Sembène

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