The Maldives State Shipping Company Private Limited (MSS) has begun preparations to establish shipping routes to Kulhudhuffushi City and Addu City. MSS is currently procuring a ship to establish the routes.
MSS established a shipping route between Tuticorin in India, and Addu City in 2020, which ended in March last year due to the lack of demand. The ship had a 4,000 tonne capacity but was transporting only 300 tonnes of goods for businesses in Addu, while the rest of the cargo space was used to carry goods for State Trading Organisation (STO) and material for companies carrying out various projects in Addu. Demand plummeted further after the completion of the projects.
Speaking to PSM News, Executive Director Mohamed Nazim said that MSS began procuring a new ship to establish routes to Kulhudhuffushi and Addu last month. He said the new ship will be small enough to easily navigate in the region and that the company has determined a feasible business model for the project and expects to sustainably continue the shipping operation in order for residents of both cities to receive lasting benefits.
MSS is scheduled to establish the shipping routes to Kulhudhuffushi and Addu within two to three months. The routes will allow businesses in the cities to book the transport of goods from any part of the globe. MSS stated that businesses can request to bring in goods from any country as MSS can handle shipments via a freight forwarding from countries that do not have MSS containers. The state-owned company regularly transports goods from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Kuwait, Indonesia, and China and handles 50-60% of the shipments between Male’ and Colombo in Sri Lanka.