Month: July 2021

AAL Shipping (AAL) has appointed local Busan-based multipurpose and project heavy lift specialist, Wallem Korea, as its exclusive commercial and port agency representative in South Korea with immediate effect.  The Agency is part of the Wallem Group, which was founded in 1903 and has an extremely well-established office network across Asia, offering world-class front-line shipping agency support to shipowners. Wallem Korea takes over AAL’s South Korean representation from the carrier’s own office that was based in Seoul.

Christophe Grammare, AAL’s Commercial Director explained, ‘South Korea has always been integral to our operations and AAL has had a consistent representation in the market for over 10 years, serving the local multipurpose cargo shipping community with a wide range of flexible ocean transportation services. These include scheduled liner operations, regular trade lane sailings and tramp services that connect the region with key trading partners in Asia, Oceania, Middle East, Europe and the Americas.’

He added, ‘Wallem Korea has a strong reputation and experience within the South Korean market and will shortly be expanding its local physical network, so our ambitions to comprehensively grow this market are very much aligned. We are looking forward to working together to enhance our commercial presence and penetrate the local market further with our range of highly competitive multipurpose and project heavy lift cargo solutions.’    

Cargo and operations enquiries for AAL in South Korea can now be made to:  Jay Shim at Wallem Korea / telephone: +82 10 3552 2330 / email:  korea@aalshipping.com

This Summer, AAL Shipping (AAL) delivered four of the largest rubber tyred gantry cranes (RTGs) in the carrier’s history to the Port of Oslo (Oslo Havn KF), Norway. These new generation mobile units, measuring 36 m in height and 28 m in length, were transported from Taicang in China to Oslo on a single sailing aboard the 31,000 deadweight ‘mega-size’ multipurpose vessel (MPV), the AAL Pusan.

The cranes were engineered and manufactured by Kalmar, part of Cargotec and Rainbow-Cargotec Industries Co. Ltd (RCI) in Taicang and will help to deal with the increased volume of container arrivals from Asia and Europe at Norway’s busiest port – a facility that handled 1.5 million metric tonnes of containers in 2019 alone.   The four cranes had a combined weight of almost 700 tonnes. Three of the cranes were fully erected and the fourth was loaded in parts, using the AAL Pusan’s port-side heavy lift cranes (700 tonnes max lift). They were transported from China to Norway along AAL’s monthly ‘Asia – Europe Trade Route’. They will be deployed at the Port of Oslo, Norway’s main logistics hub that handles about 80% of the country’s imported containerised goods.  

Eike Muentz, General Manager Europe, AAL, commented; “This particular cargo was booked through our Finland office in Porvoo – part of our expanding European office network. Demand for regular and dependable services between Asia and Europe has grown exponentially in 2021, as markets rush to address shortfalls in scheduled development projects and shortages in general stock and commodity levels, depleted due to the pandemic lock-down of the past 18 months. In this sense, we are not just moving project heavy lift cargo like these cranes, but smaller breakbulk parcels, general cargoes, dry bulk commodities, steel, and containers.”  

AAL operates one of the multipurpose shipping sector’s largest fleets of specialist MPV heavy lift vessels, comprising both mega-size (30,000+ deadweight tonnage) and smaller tonnage vessels. These are deployed worldwide, serving the carrier’s tailor-made tramp chartering services, regular fixed trade routes and scheduled monthly liner services.