Seafood Exported to Thailand via Chabahar
EghtesadOnline: Reefers carrying Iran’s seafood products have been sent to Thailand via the southeastern port of Chabahar for the first time, the head of Sistan-Baluchestan Ports and Maritime Organization said.
“The shipment will be sent to India’s Mundra Port and then transshipped to Thailand’s Bangkok. In addition, normal cargo containers carrying the second shipment of Afghanistan’s dried fruits have been transported to China’s Tianjin by the same cargo ship,” Behrouz Aqaie was also quoted as saying by IRNA.
Noting that over the past month, four container ships carrying Afghanistan products have left Chabahar’s Shahid Beheshti Port for India, the official said, “In the past, exports from Chabahar were restricted to one destination, namely India, but we managed to tap into the benefits of the country’s only oceanic port and expand the export destinations of Iran and Afghanistan to other countries, including China, Thailand and Malaysia.”
Chabahar is of strategic importance for Iran, as it is the country’s only oceanic port, which bypasses the narrow chokepoint of Strait of Hormuz connected to the Persian Gulf.
The first phase of Shahid Beheshti Port development project was inaugurated in December 2017 by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, opening a new strategic route connecting Iran, India and Afghanistan.
Chabahar consists of two separate port terminals: Shahid Kalantari and Shahid Beheshti.
The opening of the first phase of Shahid Beheshti Port (out of five phases defined for the project) has tripled its capacity to 8.5 million tons (equal to that of all the northern ports of the country), allows the docking of super-large container ships (between 100,000 DWT and 120,000 DWT) and increases India’s connectivity with Afghanistan.