Evergreen Marine Corporation has decided to concentrate its Mediterranean feeder operations on the southern Italian port of Gioia Tauro. The company already calls at Gioia Tauro with its AME, WMU and IAM services and is now to switch its PFM service from Larnaca (Cyprus) to Gioia Tauro with effect from Ever Gleamy, due to arrive Gioia Tauro on 3 November.

The switch of the PFM service to Gioia Tauro gives Evergreen three sailings a fortnight between the Mediterranean and the Far East. This is expected to become twice weekly in early 1998 with the upgrading of the AME service.

While Fos (France), Barcelona and Valencia (Spain) continue to be direct ports of call, the feeder possibilities from Gioia Tauro extend Evergreen's port coverage to include the Italian ports of Ancona, Leghorn, Naples, Salerno, Palermo, Civitavecchia, Livorno and La Spezia plus Piraeus, Thessaloniki (Greece), Izmir, Mersin, Istanbul (Turkey), Beirut (Lebanon), Odessa (Ukraine), Constantza (Romania), Varna (Bulgaria), Alexandria, Port Said (Egypt) and Limassol (Cyprus).

The company also expects to benefit from better empty positioning opportunities which should yield major savings.

Operated by Medcenter Container Terminal SpA, the Gioia Tauro container terminal offers a quay length of over 3 kilometres with a depth alongside ranging from 12.5m to15m. During the second half of 1997, six new gantry cranes are being commissioned, bringing the total number of post-Panamax cranes at the port to 14.