The National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia (NSCSA), a company that came into existence by a royal decree in 1979, now owns Ro-Ros, VLCCs (very large crude carrier) and petrochemical vessels.

NSCSA is headquartered in Riyadh and functions through various regional offices, subsidiaries and a network of agency offices.

NSCSA started its shipping service in 1980 by acquiring two Ro-Ro vessels. Five years later began the transportation of petrochemicals, and in 1996, crude oil was transported.

A joint venture company, Mideast Ship Management Company at Dubai and a container storage and repair yard at Jeddah were set up in 1997.

NSCSA presently operates liner service carrying multipurpose general cargo with its four Ro-Ro ships between the Arabian Gulf-Indian Subcontinent and US/Canada (East Coast) and US (Gulf) route.

After exiting from the Europe-Asia containerized service in June this year, NSCSA launched a global freight forwarding/NVOCC business mainly to serve customers in Saudi Arabia.

It will utilise its existing sales force and customer contacts that were developed over decades as a full-fledged liner operator.

As a strategic initiative, NSCSA has embarked upon an expansion plan to give a major thrust to its participation in the worldwide transportation of crude oil using high specification, high quality VLCCs.

Last year, NSCSA acquired four 303,000dwt VLCC new designs from original owner Hellespont Shipping Corporation.

Out of these, NSCSA has already taken delivery of three ships from Samsung Shipyard, Korea and the last vessel is scheduled for delivery soon.

Earlier in 1996/97 NSCSA acquired five Mitsubishi, Japan built VLCCs and with the recent delivery of the four Samsung built vessels, NSCSA will now own a total of nine VLCCs in the 300,000+dwt range, giving a combined transportation capacity of 19 million barrels or about 2.7 million dwt.

Most of these are on charter to Vela International, a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco.

With the increase in demand for the Kingdom's petrochemical products, NSCSA decided to acquire a fair share of the petrochemicals transportation business with its assets, resources and track record in the maritime service.

In 1985, Uqba Ibn Nafe (43,000 dwt) was built and was subsequently chartered out to Sabic.

In 1986, the Arabian Chemical Carrier (ACC) was established, and tanker Al-Farabi (41,400 dwt) was acquired. This was also chartered out.

As the firm saw immense potential in the transport of petrochemicals, the National Chemical Carrier Ltd Co (NCC) was founded in 1990 as an 80:20 joint venture with Sabic.

NCC currently owns 14 modern petrochemical product vessels.

In 1997, a subsidiary, Mideast Ship Management Ltd (MSML) was formed as a 80:20 joint venture with Acomarit.

MSML's main business is ship management, besides acting as a shipping agent in the UAE. Meanwhile, NSCSA (America) Inc handles North American agency duties for NSCSA.

NSCSA has invested considerably in handling and maintaining its containers.

Jeddah Islamic Port is the company's most important centre for container handling, storage, repairs and maintenance. A container service yard was set up in Jeddah in 1997 to facilitate these activities.

A specialised workshop in the yard takes up repair jobs and refurbishes containers according to international standards.