Washington: The US department of defence has tapped a number of top container lines as it readies to pull out of Afghanistan. In a retrenchment of equipment that might cost up to $7bn, according to Bloomberg, Maersk, APL, and Hapag-Lloyd have been tasked with shipping around 22,000 teu of kit out of the country by the end of 2014, 13 years after the US first invaded the Central Asian country. Some 60% of the cargoes will go on truck to Pakistan’s Karachi port, with the remainder heading north by truck and rail to Baltic Sea ports in either Latvia or Lithuania. [14/05/13]
