Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) today announced the creation of a 100% owned agency company, OOCL (Russia) Limited. It will commence on July 1, 2002 and be based in St Petersburg with a Moscow sales office. Nick Popov, General Manager with Intransservice Limited, who has been OOCL’s agent since 1997, will be Managing Director.
Ted Wang, Managing Director for OOCL (Europe) Limited, London, said, "OOCL has been serving St Petersburg and the Russian market with our own dedicated Scan Baltic Express (SBX) service since April 1998. Starting with two ice-class vessels we have steadily upgraded our service step by step until today we have two separate services, SBX1 and SBX 2, making two calls each week. We are confident we are now a leader in this market in terms of customer service quality. To maintain and build on this it is a natural step to setup our own company, OOCL (Russia) Limited. I am delighted Nick Popov will be our first Managing Director in Russia and am confident we will continue to strengthen the OOCL service quality in this growing market."
The two services calling at St Petersburg are: SBX1 operating with two 860 TEU ice-class vessels, "OOCL Neva" and "OOCL Nevskiy" which provide a fixed-day weekly sailing between St Petersburg - Hamburg - Grangemouth - Antwerp - Rotterdam - Gdansk - Hamina - St Petersburg, and SBX2 operating one 600 TEU ice-class vessel, "OOCL Narva" which provides a weekly service between St Petersburg - Gdansk - Hamburg - St Petersburg. Both services have built up an enviable record of schedule reliability especially during the winter months. The service rotations are designed to provide optimum relay links with services to and from Asia and North America. They are also constructed to meet the growing demand for intra-European traffic.
OOCL, headquartered in Hong Kong, is an international container transport and logistics service provider. Linking Asia, Europe, North America, the Mediterranean, the Indian sub-continent, the Middle East and Australia/New Zealand, the company offers transportation services to all major trading economies of the world. Website: www.oocl.com
