Safmarine

Shipping company Safmarine has announced a reshuffling of its existing West Africa shipping routes and the introduction of three new services – the WAF11, WAF12 and WAF13 – as part of its revised West Africa service portfolio.

The Antwerp-based company said the new services would run between Europe and West Africa but would also operate in other markets that Safmarine serves through transshipment in Port Tangier or Algeciras, particularly Asia, the Americas, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent.

In a statement, Dirk Geens, Safmarine’s Africa trade director, said the overall network would “offer competitive and improved transit times to all key ports in West Africa”.

He said: “Increasing the number of services overall has not only allowed us to reduce the number of port calls on some of the existing West African services, but it will also give us greater flexibility when it comes to handling volume overflows.

“For example, transit times from Algeciras to Onne have decreased from 21 to 14 days and from Algeciras to Cotonou from 20 to 12 days.”