(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) Turkish logistics companies will use the trans-Iran route instead of crossing through Egypt on their way to the Gulf states as of April 23, International Transporters Association CEO, Fatih Sener said on Tuesday.
The Egyptian authorities announced that they would not extend the agreement between Turkey and Egypt, which enables logistics companies to use Ro-Ro ships, vessels designed to carry wheeled cargo, to get to Egypt's Alexandria port and then to use a land route to countries on the Arabian Peninsula.
The expiration of the agreement with Egypt on April 23 obliged Turkish logistics companies to find alternative routes to the Egyptian straits.
"We are working on two solutions to problem. In first alternative, we envisage transport of Turkish trucks via new Ro-Ro voyages through Suez canal without travelling on Egyptian land," Sener said. "The second alternative is a new trans-Iran route which also includes Ro-Ro voyages and is expected to halve the costs."
Sener noted that first alternative is about a thousand dollars more expensive than the current route but also has significantly shorter travel time, which will enable transporters to diversify their cargo types to non-durable goods.
Although they don't want to focus their efforts on just one route, Sener said that the Iran route, which passes through Turkey's Gurbulak customs at the Iran border to Bushehr port of Iran and a Ro-Ro voyage to ports at the Arabian peninsula is the second and cheaper alternative which will boost Turkish logistic companies' competitiveness to the level of the pre-Syria crisis period.
"We signed agreements to pass Iran via the transit pass. We don't pay for them anymore, as we used to. The route to Iran's Bushehr port and crossing to Qatar and Dubai via Ro-Ro ships is a solution, which will halve the costs. And we started negotiations," Sener said.
"Actually as of now there is no obstacle to using this route. We just negotiate to boost capacity of this route with moves like increasing Ro-Ro voyages to cope up with mounting logistics traffic. Even now there are our trucks using this route."
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