The world's second biggest container shipping company, Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), has committed more traffic to Lithuania's Klaipeda port in a move expected to divert traffic from Antwerp and Bremerhaven, reported Reuters.

Lithuanian stevedoring firm Klaipedos Smelte said it would start providing container transhipment services for privately owned, Swiss-based MSC at Klaipeda and expected volumes to grow sharply.

Klaipeda, the northernmost ice-free port on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, overtook Tallinn by a fraction to become the second largest port after Saint Petersburg last year.

"We have signed a 10-year contract with MSC to use our capacities to establish a container transhipment hub for MSC in the Baltic Sea basin," chief executive Rimantas Juska told Reuters. "We plan to start operating as a hub already in the second half of 2012,"

Juska said Klaipedos Smelte planned to boost its volumes from 160,000 TEUs last year to a million TEUs in 2023.

The Lithuanian company is 96 percent owned by Terminal Investment Limited (TIL), a company that works closely with MSC, itself second only to Denmark's Maersk Line in the sector.

Klaipeda port saw its throughput rise to 36.6 million tonnes in 2011 from 31.3 million tonnes a year ago helped by growth in volumes of fertilisers and containers.

Tallinn slipped to 36.5 million tonnes.

Eugenijus Gentvilas, the head of Klaipeda port, said other Baltic ports were hit by competition from Russian Ust-Luga, but Klaipeda has not been affected.

"So far we've not noticed that (Vladimir) Putin's vision to divert all Russian cargo from the Baltic ports have become a reality," he told Reuters in an interview last week.

Russian cargoes totalled about four million tonnes at Klaipeda last year, with export of metals restarted after a decade, Gentvilas added.

Gentvilas said the port planned to invest up to US$94.99 million in infrastructure, including capital dredging of the port fairways up to 14.5m deep by 2013.

Source: Cargonews Asia