December 4 - From January 1, 2010, Nordana will shift its Spanish operations from Valencia port to Sagunto port.

This applies to the regular ro-ro multi-purpose liner service that Nordana operates between the USA, North Africa and the Mediterranean areas returning to Houston via Venezuela, the Caribbean Islands and Central America / Mexico.

Both Valencia port and Sagunto port are within the Port of Valencia authority. This change is being made to accommodate Valencia's long term plans, whereby multi-purpose cargo is expected to be handled exclusively at Sagunto.

"In order to minimize any future inconvenience to our clients or disruption to our service, Nordana is acting now on an operational situation we see as inevitable," said Steen Obst, vice president, Americas.

"In recent years we have steadily increased our focus on non-containerised cargoes. We have previously moved operations from Barcelona to Tarragona, following our strategy of matching the multi-purpose cargo handling skills of our vessels and crew with the same level of skill and expertise in our terminals."

Facilities at Sagunto are scheduled to be continually expanded over the next two years, allowing customers to benefit from better and more economical cargo handling in a port that remains largely without congestion, while being easily accessible to the main traffic corridors to central Spain and the local region of Valencia.

The first vessel to call Sagunto will be the MV Skanderborg on January 16, 2010.