The port of Salalah, a gateway port and transshipment hub on the Arabian Sea, has announced that French-based CMA CGM has added two new weekly services to East Africa and Europe, beginning the first week of December: the Noura Express and the EPIC service.

The Noura Express service, on the East Africa trade lane operates four vessels of up to 2,755 TEU capacity, linking the ports of Jebel Ali and Khor al Fakkan in the UAE, Mombasa, Kenya, Mogadishu, Somalia, and Salalah. At Salalah, transshipment will be available to CMA CGM’s Europe Pakistan India Consortium (EPIC) Service, which links ports in South Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and North Europe. The EPIC Service is operated with eight vessels of up to 9,400 TEU capacity.

“The introduction of the EPIC service to the port of Salalah provides our growing customer base in Salalah with an additional opportunity for export to Europe, the Mediterranean and North Africa, as well as for imports from the Indian subcontinent,” said Port of Salalah CEO David Gledhill. “The Noura Service call leverages the strategic location of Salalah to provide a new, fast cargo connection from East Africa to Europe, which can potentially be also used to accommodate Omani imports from Kenya and Somalia.”

Part of the APM Terminals Global Terminal Network, the port of Salalah is now undergoing an expansion which is due to double the quay length, and increase dry bulk capacity to 20 million tons, and liquid bulk capacity to 6 million tons annually. The port of Salalah, in which APM Terminals operates and holds a 30-percent share, handled 3.03 million TEUs in 2014, along with 7.9 million tons of bulk cargo.