Port of Barcelona launches new route to West Africa and increases regular lines to America and Asia

Barcelona (ACN).- The Port of Barcelona has been opening new regular routes for container transportation in the last few months, improving the connections with strategic markets in the Americas, Asia, West Africa and the Mediterranean area. An example of this trend is the new route served by MNM African Shipping Line, a company founded this year based in the port of Tanger-Med and working for transport and logistics firms from Morocco and Nigeria. This new line will be using vessels with a 2,500 TEU container capacity to connect the Catalan capital with major ports in North and West Africa such as Tangier, Casablanca, Agadir, Nouakchott, Dakar, Conakry, Lagos, Tema and Abidjan, covering an area with some 300 million people.

The ports connected by MNM African Shipping Line have an important economic growth index thanks to the exploitation of natural resources in West Africa, particularly concerning the new agrarian production lines and the extraction of gas, oil and different strategic minerals for industrial processes. MNM’s new service will operate every two weeks and will use multipurpose vessels which can transport up to 2,500 TEU containers and can also be adapted to carry special loads.

According to information released this week by Barcelona’s Port Authority, this is not the only new maritime line that has been set up in the last few months. Indeed, the Catalan capital is now better connected with markets in South America, the Caribbean, North America and the Middle East. Furthermore, the Port of Barcelona is already operating with the companies that account for 80% of the world’s total transport of TEU containers.

For instance, the shipping company ZIM has launched a new regular weekly connection between Barcelona and New York, which enables the connecting of the Catalan capital to ports in North American East Coast harbours such as Norfolk, Savannah and Halifax, from where sea freight can also reach Montreal and Toronto.