Pelindo targets 40 percent of Malacca Strait transshipment traffic, leaning on Nipah STS and a planned Dumai hub
The state port operator says Singapore and Malaysia now control roughly 60 percent of traffic on the strait, where Indonesia's share is currently minimal.
Pelindo is targeting around 40 percent of transshipment cargo services on the Malacca Strait, a corridor of roughly 110,000 ship movements per year in which Singapore and Malaysia currently hold about 60 percent, business development director Prasetyo said Monday. Indonesia's current role in the strait's transshipment business is, in his words, almost nonexistent.
Two instruments back the target. The Nipah ship-to-ship anchorage area near Batam, operated by subsidiary Pelindo Jasa Maritim, was reactivated on 9 October under a transport ministry concession and has already handled its first mother-vessel-to-daughter-vessel transfers without a terminal on shore. The company also plans a Dumai transshipment hub, citing the example of the roughly 90 percent of Semarang's international cargo that currently routes through Singapore as volume it intends to redirect. The program is the most explicit challenge yet to the strait's duopoly, but it remains an executive aspiration: no public roadmap, budget, or procurement schedule has been published, and earlier Indonesian transshipment initiatives in Batam have repeatedly stalled. New anchorage and hub operations would create fresh document and compliance workflows — vessel clearances, transfer manifests, customs oversight at sea — that depend on credible audit trails, a sensitivity sharpened by the area's history of illegal fuel transfers.