XCL Shipping line

Seacon and Xpress Container Line operates a fleet of over 60 container ships employed in scheduled feeder services covering Europe, Mediterranean, Black Sea, Arabian gulf, Indian sub-continent, South East Asia and China coast.

We operate a network of feeder services supporting the major transhipment hub ports of : Rotterdam, Barcelona, Gioia Tauro, Damietta, Jeddah, Dubai, Khor Fakkan, Colombo, Port Kelang, Singapore & Kaoshiung. The group moves over 2 million teus per annum.

Our customers are the Container Shipping Companies , who outsource the feeding of container traffic flows to and from their Line haul vessels.

Sea Consortium is based in Singapore and X-press Container Line in London, with regional offices in Dubai, Barcelona, Genoa and Geneva.

Serving our customers is a 100 strong-team of highly trained and motivated shipping specialist who are dedicated to understanding our customers needs and providing them with feeding solutions. We are committed to a seamless interchange of containers and safe delivery of cargo for our customers.

History

A quiet revolution in the transportation industry started in the 60s with the conversion of the movement of merchandise from breakbulk to containers. Containerization has been the catalyst for the development of intermodalism - the secure and comparatively cheap transfer of merchandise in containers from ship to road to river to rail. This has had a profound impact on international trade. Goods dispatched from the point of origin now invariably reach their destination in the same condition; transportion costs less; goods are traded worldwide with far greater ease and efficiency; and manufacturers are able to reap the benefit of low labour costs and Just In Time stock management. Once goods are packed for shipment into an ISO steel container, they are delivered directly from the shipper's door to the consignee's door. This has resulted in 8% annualized growth in container traffic over the past 3 decades and rapid economic growth in many developing countries.

The size of container ships has increased in order to handle growing demand and as the Main Line Carriers pursue greater economies of scale. These same economies of scale dictate the need to consolidate traffic flows over fewer ports and to limit the number of port calls a ship makes in a voyage. As the container industry developed and the breakbulk trades were increasingly containerized the need to serve smaller ports with container feeder ships developed. Many regional ports have physical restrictions on the depth and size of ships that can enter the port so smaller container-feeder-ships are used to feed container traffic over Hub ports, which have the water depth and facilities required to handle the large line haul containerships.

Sea Consortium started its first feeder services in 1978, since then we have grown with the industry. Our business first developed in South East Asia, Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Gulf as we pioneered the development of feeder services in these areas.