Baltic Reefer Group and the Seatrade group of companies have announced the establishment of a new joint venture that will operate under the name of Reefer
Alliance, according to a joint statement from the companies.
Reefer Alliance will start operating as of 1 January 2013 and will bring together the marketing and sales of both Baltic Shipping and Seatrade Reefer Chartering in specific trade lanes by combining both fleets of the two specialised reefer companies.
The purpose of Reefer Alliance is to achieve improved flexibility, improved service levels and increased efficiency by joint operation of the combined fleet of about 96 specialised reefer ships in the range of 350,000ft3 to 626,000ft3 in three core trades: South Africa to St. Petersburg; Chile to St. Petersburg; and Morocco to St. Petersburg.
This will maintain the parties’ ability to provide competitive and commercially attractive specialised reefer services in response to the competition of the container lines.
The parties will continue to operate their fleets in their present structure, and through optimised scheduling achieve the efficiencies looked for.
The marketing of the new venture will be taken care of by Baltic Shipping in St. Petersburg.
Baltic Shipping will be represented by Anlin Shipping of Cape Town in South Africa; Beagle Navigation, trading as Seatrade Chile, of Santiago in Chile; and Maritime Ship Services of Casablanca in Morocco.
The groups said the Reefer Alliance with its professional staff will guarantee improved schedules and availability of quality tonnage in the competitive shipping environment.
