The Lamu Port is this week expected to receive another vessel with transhipment cargo from Europe and the Middle East.
The vessel, Seago Piraeus, is operated by Maersk Shipping Line. It is expected to dock at the Port of Lamu on Saturday and discharge 100 containers destined for Zanzibar. The cargo will be picked from Lamu on a smaller vessel for its final destination.
This will be a third vessel operated by Maersk Line to dock at the facility after MV Cap Carmel and MV Seago Line. The first two docked during the commissioning of the port on May 20 by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
In a statement on Monday, Maersk Shipping Line said the planned arrival of MV Seago Piraeus with transhipment cargo shows their commitment to supporting business at the Port of Lamu.
Maersk Eastern Africa managing director Carl Lorenz said their partnership with Kenya Port Authorities, the government and all port stakeholders will grow the economy.
“This marks another milestone in the long history we, as Maersk, have been serving Kenya, through both Mombasa and Lamu, ensuring that importers and exporters in Eastern Africa are able to connect their cargo to all global markets,” Lorenz said.
MV Seago Piraeus is a Denmark-flagged vessel with a capacity of 4,500 TEUs. It will offload 100 units at the Port of Lamu to be picked up by MV Amu 1 for the final destination in Zanzibar.
Last month, Lamu Port received two commercial vessels; MV Amu 1, which brought cargo from Zanzibar and MV Spirit of Dubai. MV Spirit transported the transhipment cargo to Jeddah Port in Saudi Arabia.
MV Amu 1, which is operated by Lamu Shipping Limited, was the first commercial ship to arrive at the port with transhipment cargo after a 35-hour voyage from Zanzibar.
The vessel, which has a capacity of 124 TEUs, had on board 62 containers—41 forty-foot containers and 21 twenty-foot containers. They had various agricultural products from Zanzibar destined for Saudi Arabia.
The cargo vessel plies the East African Coast between Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden and Maputo in Mozambique, including the Islands of Zanzibar, Pemba, Mayotte, and Comoros.
MV Spirit of Dubai is operated by French company CMA CGM international shipping line. It arrived to pick the cargo in a ceremony attended by KPA and senior government officials.
So far, Maersk Shipping Line and CMA CGM are the only two international lines to have docked at the Port of Lamu since May.
In early July, a delegation from the CMA CGM visited the Lamu Port on a familiarisation tour and expressed interest to invest in the new facility.
Vice president for Africa Ludovic Rozan and CMA CGM East Africa managing director Longin Jean Baptiste said Lamu is a good opportunity for a transhipment base. They agreed to regularly deploy vessels to Lamu Port.
Acting KPA managing director John Mwangemi said they are investing Sh4 billion to equip the Lamu Port with modern shipping handling equipment.
KPA will import three ship-to-shore gantry cranes, five mobile harbour cranes, eight rubber tyre gantry cranes, and 18 terminal tractors.
The Lamu Port is already equipped with two mobile harbour cranes, two rubber-tyred gantry cranes, a mobile Kenya Revenue Authority mobile scanner and several terminal tractors.
The first batch of new equipment is expected within the next three months.
