Commodity traders have benefited from an increased supply chain efficiency and lower costs, by shipping with Maersk Line and storing their commodities at its main transshipment port in Southeast Asia, the Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP) in Johor, Malaysia.

Commodities such as cotton have typically been shipped from source to destination directly.

For example, a container shipment from Africa to China would take 35 days. By shipping the cotton and storing it at the PTP, the cotton can be sent from Malaysia to China in seven days instead, Maersk said in a statement.

It said traders can sell the short-haul cotton at a premium over the traded price, because of the quick availability of the produce, and lower risk of price fluctuations.

Commodity traders based in Singapore are seeing the advantages of shipping and storing the commodities in PTP.

"Warehousing includes storage and re-handling fees, and is more expensive, especially in land-scarce Singapore. Storing the commodities in containers at the spacious and strategically-located PTP is a more cost effective alternative.

"We have successfully helped a trader who ships 2,000 containers of cotton a year to save S$1.7 million," said Bjarne Foldager, Maersk Line Cluster Manager for Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei.

He said with more traders operating from Singapore, they can stand to benefit from the company's solution to store commodities at the PPTP.

"We have been working on perfecting this solution with cotton traders, and are looking to explore new commodities such as resins and base metals," Foldager added.

Maersk Line is a division of the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group and is the leading liner shipping company in the world serving customers across the globe.