Business Briefs - June 5, 2008

Hanjin Shipping to use Malta Freeport as central hub

Hanjin Shipping Company Limited of Seoul, Republic of Korea will be transferring its Far East and central Mediterranean service to the Malta Freeport. The first vessel, Hanjin Taipei, is expected in Malta on Thursday.

To service its sales and marketing, port agency, cargo handling, transhipment and its feeder service, Hanjin Shipping has appointed Sullivan Shipping Agencies Limited as its Malta agent.

Hanjin Shipping will be operating two weekly Asian services, the MAP and MEX services to/from and via Malta. In addition it will also be offering their own weekly feeder connection between Malta, Koper and Venice, starting from mid June.

Speaking about this agency appointment, John E. Sullivan, chairman of Sullivan Shipping, said that "we are proud and honoured to be appointed as agents of one of the most important shipping lines in the world. This agency appointment will help to give us the right platform to offer our clients a variety of new services with an established global shipping line".

Mr Sullivan added that Hanjin Shipping's transfer of operations to Malta Freeport is a vote of confidence to Malta and the services offered by Malta Freeport.

New FOI committee for quality management

The Federation of Industry has established a quality management committee, within the organisation. The need for this committee has been noted for some time, as the importance of quality management is becoming more and more apparent.

Quality management is a culture that is still being introduced as well as practised in companies all over the world. This involves the participation of all members in the organisation who are normally trained to aim at long-term success through customer satisfaction and benefits to all members of the organisation and to society. Total quality management or rather continuous business improvement requires that a company maintains a high in all aspects of its ; ensuring that things are done right the first time and that defects and waste are eliminated from and processes, not just in production or sales.

The committee's objectives are to instill awareness among top management on the importance of a quality management culture; to introduce formal training courses that would lead to accredited/certified qualifications in quality management and services to guide and offer contact points to members on a number of possible quality issues such as improvement product quality, obtaining certification, interpretation of standards, etc, as well as providing information on possibilities to tap on funds in relation to quality management and product development.

Emidio J. Friggieri is committee chairman. The members are Stephen Rizzo, Mark Spiteri, Ronald Attard Pullicino, Patrick Camilleri Mercieca, Nonzio Bonello and Ray Muscat.

Bargain magazine again voted Malta's most popular publication

For the 6th time running, the Bargain has scored highest on the list of favourite local magazines, according to the latest survey carried out by independent media research company, Media Warehouse.

The surveys are carried out every two months and the results are published on a six-monthly basis. Media Warehouse surveys are widely regarded as the most reliable independent market research figures on mass media in general and cover a variety of media by type and segment. The latest survey covers the period November last year to April this year.

In the publications segment the survey asked interviewees which were their two favourite magazines.

The Bargain consistently topped the list with 35.9 per cent of preferences in December 2007, 35 per cent in February 2008 and 35.3 per cent in April. The average for the period for the Bargain is 35.2 per cent followed by the Circle at 17.6 per cent, Gwida at 12.9 per cent and so forth down the table.