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Vehicle ship
to be built
for Hawaii

$70 million, 575-foot ship designed
specifically for transporting cars,
trucks, other vehicles

By Rob Perez
Star-Bulletin

A mainland joint venture announced today that it has signed a $70 million contract to build a 575-foot ship designed specifically for transporting cars, trucks and other vehicles between Hawaii and the West Coast.

The vessel is expected to start serving the Hawaii market in 2002, providing new competition to Matson Navigation Co., which currently ships the majority of cars and trucks to and from the islands, and CSX Lines.

Most of the roughly 150,000 vehicles shipped to and from Hawaii annually now are placed in shipping containers, a very inefficient way of transporting vehicles, said Nickel H.S. van Reesema, an executive with Van Ommeren Shipping (USA), a Connecticut-based shipowner that is part of the joint venture, Pasha Hawaii Transport Lines LLC.

Van Reesema said Hawaii is the only major vehicle-shipment market worldwide not served by ships built specifically to transport cars and trucks, which can be rolled on and off such ships and parked in enclosed decks.

Jeff Hull, a spokesman for Matson, which last year moved about 100,000 vehicles to and from Hawaii, said two of the company's seven ships that serve the islands have limited "roll on, roll off" capacity for vehicles.

He said Matson has no immediate plans to boost that capacity, but noted the company's auto transporting operations recently received certification meeting international standards of quality.

"Our customers appear to be pleased with the current service," Hull said.

But van Reesema said a survey Pasha Hawaii did of auto manufacturers, the military and others involved in moving vehicles to and from Hawaii indicated overwhelming preference for ships designed for such purposes.

"It was incredible," van Reesema said of the response.

The other part of the joint venture is The Pasha Group, a California-based automobile handling and logistics company.

The Pasha vessel is to be constructed in Mississippi and will be the first ship built in the United States that will be specifically designed to transport cars and trucks, according to van Reesema.

It will have 10 decks and the capacity to carry more than 4,000 vehicles. "It's like a huge floating garage," van Reesema said.

A Pasha statement said the operation, when launched, will create jobs in Hawaii, but van Reesema was not sure how many.

Plans to start serving the Hawaii market have been in the works for about 1 years, he said.

Pasha already handles logistics for military, Volkswagen and Honda shipments between Hawaii and the West Coast.