Container ship operator Orient Overseas (International) Ltd, owned by the family of Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, said on Monday it was considering operating its own container terminal in Singapore.
"If opportunities present (themselves) whether in Singapore or elsewhere, we will be interested in looking at terminal participation in various forms," Tung Chee Chen, the chairman and chief executive of OOIL told reporters in the city state.
The company owns and operates six terminals in Vancouver, California, New York, New Jersey and Kaohsiung in Taiwan.
Singapore's position as the world's largest transhipment hub has come under threat in recent years because of growing competition from cheaper neighbours, particularly Malaysia's Port of Tanjung Pelepas.
In a bid to make Singapore more attractive to shippers, the government said in 2002 that it would allow international shipping lines to run their own dedicated berths, if they found it more profitable than using the services of domestic port operators PSA Corp and Jurong Port.
China-backed container leasing firm COSCO Pacific Ltd set up a joint venture with government-owned PSA Corp last year to manage two berths in the city state.
The Singapore government also recently allowed PSA to develop five new berths at one of its Singapore terminals to increase container handling capacity by about 20 percent.
Asked whether the company was in discussions with Singapore state-owned port operator PSA Corp Ltd for a joint venture similar to the recent PSA-COSCO tie up, Tung said: "We are always in touch with PSA. It's still very exploratory."
OOIL's shipping arm Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) has been calling in Singapore since the 1960s, and moved close to one million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) through the city state last year.
By 2007, OOCL will have 12 vessels with a capacity of 8,063 TEUs each, the largest container ships in the world, along with 26 ships with 5,800 TEU vessels, Tung said.
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