News / Cosco launches Incheon-North Africa used car shipping service

Credit: Cosco Shipping Specialised Carriers

Cosco Shipping Specialised Carriers, the Chinese group’s multipurpose arm, yesterday launched a regular service to ship used cars from Incheon to North Africa in containers.

This is a first between Incheon and North Africa, an emerging market for secondhand cars, with the main gateway to the Seoul metropolitan area South Korea’s largest export port for such vehicles.

According to Incheon Port Authority (IPA), Cosco launched the North Africa Express (NAX) service yesterday, linking Incheon to Shanghai, Egypt’s Port Said, Libya’s Benghazi and Misrata ports.

North Africa is a growing export destination for used cars, and Libya, in particular, is cited as the country that imports the most used cars from South Korea.

The new 80,000 dwt Guo Yun Hai was assigned to the maiden voyage four days after Dalian Cosco KHI Ship Industries delivered the ship.

IPA expects the opening of the new route to generate additional annual exports of more than 10,000 teu of used cars. Initially, Cosco plans to deploy four 80,000 dwt multipurpose vessels on the weekly service, and gradually increase this to 18 in Q4 26.

The company said: “NAX establishes a direct sea route between East Asia and Egypt and Libya, providing an efficient and convenient logistics bridge for import and export companies. This route breaks away from traditional transhipment models to achieve direct shipping, significantly improving transport efficiency and reducing logistics costs.”

The container capacities of the ships are not known although Cosco Shipping said the vessels are built with box-shaped cargo holds to enable carriage of a wide range of cargo.

There are now 72 container shipping routes calling at Incheon, and IPA said it “continued to work with shipping lines to increase new connections”.

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