After almost 13.5 years of trading, EMES Shipping & Transport - the container liner shipping arm of Izmir-headquartered Arkas Holding - has been renamed Arkas Container Transport. From the marketing perspective its various carrier-owned container services will be branded as Arkas Line.
In an official statement, the company said that the name change, which took effect on January 1, 2010, had been made to better identify the services with the Arkas brand.
According to Arkas, EMES completed 270 sailings in 2009, making more than 1,800 ports calls. Its container inventory now numbers in excess of 50,000TEU and it runs up to 30 vessels (360/1,600TEU) to support its network.
This spans the whole of the Mediterranean and Black sea basins from Russia and Egypt in the east to Morocco and Spain and beyond (the Canry Islands) in the west.
Interestingly, the company is not renaming its common-user feeder operation (shipper-owned containers), which is called EMES Feedering. This will help avoid any potential conflict that could occur between the carrier's mainline customers and Arkas' own intra-regional services.
EMES Feedering will continue to use the same ships as those deployed in the Arkas Line services.
