Tanjung Priok Offers Indonesia New Car Shipment Service

Jakarta Globe, Irvan Tisnabudi, February 14, 2010

Honda Freed minivans due to be exported to Singapore prior to loading at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta. The state-owned port operator hopes the volume of vehicle traffic through the port grows as a result of its new transshipment service. (Bloomberg Photo/Dimas Ardian)

The Tanjung Priok port car terminal on Thursday began offering new transshipment services in a bid to challenge rival regional ports.

Richard Lino, president director of state-owned port operator PT Pelindo II, said the new service and the port’s strategic location would help it compete against ports in Singapore and Malaysia.

“In the past, car exporters in countries like India and Thailand have used the transshipment service in those two countries [Singapore and Malaysia], but Indonesia now has a similar service,” he said.

Transshipment is the shipment of goods to an intermediate destination for later shipment to another locale. It is often used to gather multiple small shipments headed to a single destination into a bigger shipment.

Deputy Transportation Minister Bambang Susantono said he believed the transshipment service for cars would make the Tanjung Priok port more attractive than its rivals.

“The Tanjung Priok port has always been an attractive port for shipping vehicles to and from Southeast Asia and Australia, as it is more strategic in terms of location compared to its rivals,” he said.

Pelindo II did not reveal the price or nature of the investment required to begin offering transshipment services.

The first ship to use the new service was the Golden Fang out of India. It unloaded 394 of its 1,091 cars onto the Rocky Highway ship, heading to New Zealand and Australia. The rest were unloaded for sale on Indonesia’s domestic market.

“The tariff for unloading, then loading the car again is Rp 600,000 [$64] per car,” said Gunta Prabawa, chief of the port’s car terminal.

The port can unload 130 cars per hour and load 90 per hour. The terminal has a parking capacity of 6,000 cars.

In 2009, a total of 112,983 cars passed through the terminal: 55,670 were imported and 57,313 were exported. This was a sharp decline from 180,000 in 2008.

Aviliani, an economist at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance, welcomed the new transshipment service.

“It provides a more efficient cost alternative for the exporters, and we’ll be able to enjoy the added revenue from the shipments,” she said.

However, she cautioned that the service presented a challenge also: loading and unloading the increased number of cars with appropriate care.

“We can’t fall behind the ports in Malaysia in Singapore when it comes to fulfilling international standards for the cars being loaded and unloaded here,” Aviliani said.