International Shipper Adds New Route To Halifax
HALIFAX — International shipping giant MSC has added a double call at the Port of Halifax to its West Mediterranean-Canada shipping route.
Starting immediately, the company will include Halifax in its Canada 2 shipping line. The new line runs from Valencia, Spain to Montreal, with a stop in Halifax along the way.
The “double call” at the Port of Halifax means the city will be the ship’s first stop after leaving Europe and the last stop before heading back.
In a statement announcing the change, MSC said the new service “will offer Canadian exporters the possibility to export cargo to anywhere in the Mediterranean, as well as to the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Asia and Oceania via Barcelona and Valencia, two key Mediterranean transshipment hubs.”
“The new rotation will reinforce our offering for cargo shippers in Canada and the West Mediterranean and provide seamless connections to our global network,” the company said.
Halifax Port Authority representative Lane Farguson agreed, adding that the move is especially important for Atlantic Canadian businesses.
“This provides additional global connectivity for the importers and exporters that move goods through our international gateway, especially those Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canadian producers and manufacturers looking to access global markets,” he wrote in an e-mail to Huddle.
Cargo traffic at the Port of Halifax dropped significantly early last year as the Covid-19 pandemic snarled international trade. However, that trend reversed midway through the year, and in the final two quarters of 2020 cargo traffic at the port went up compared to 2019.
Farguson has said there’s no way to know exactly what the future looks like, but the latest announcement from MSC is a small sign that the upward trend may continue.