HYUNDAI Merchant Marine (HMM) has started calling at Westports, Malaysia this month.
The liner's first service to include Westports commenced on February 15 when the 2,200-TEU "HD Highway", which is being used on the company's Korea Middle East Service (KMS), made a stop at the Malaysian port.
In addition to HMM's move to Westports, which is one of the three national load centres in the Southeast Asian nation, other shipping lines such as CMA-CGM, China Shipping and Norasia also call at the port.
"We are indeed very pleased that year after year we have new players calling at our port and expanding our list of world ranking main liners as our partners," said Westports executive chairman Tan Sri Gnanalingam.
"2005 saw three main line operators, namely Hamburg Sud, Maruba Lines and Simatech Shipping that began using Westports as one of their port of calls and this year we have Hyundai."
HMM's Korea Middle East service is a twice-weekly service that includes ports of call at Kwangyang, Busan, Keelung, Hong Kong, Yantian, Singapore, Port Klang, Dubai and Karachi on its rotation. There will be a total of five vessels deployed on this service, a Westports statement added.