OT Africa Line is a specialist shipping line exclusively serving routes between Europe and West Africa. OTAL work exclusively in the transportation

Transport

Transport or transportation is the movement of people, cattle, animals and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations...

 (container

Containerization

Containerization is a system of freight transport based on a range of steel intermodal containers...

 shipping

Shipping

Shipping has multiple meanings. It can be a physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo, by land, air, and sea. It also can describe the movement of objects by ship.Land or "ground" shipping can be by train or by truck...

 fleet) industry, operating a line of container and RoRo

RORO

Roll-on/roll-off ships are vessels designed to carry wheeled cargo such as automobiles, trucks, semi-trailer trucks, trailers or railroad cars that are driven on and off the ship on their own wheels...

 vessels. It is a subsidiary of the CMA CGM

CMA CGM

CMA CGM S.A. is a French container transportation and shipping company, headed by Jacques Saadé. It is the third largest container company in the world, using 200 shipping routes between 400 ports in 150 different countries...

 Group, the third largest shipping company in the world.

OT Africa Line is based in Birmingham, UK, and has numerous agents across Europe and West Africa.

History

OT Africa Line was established in 1975 as a pioneering, roll-on roll-off congestion beating transport system to Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

. Nigeria went through a massive construction boom with the discovery of oil in the mid 1970s and the need to provide construction materials and equipment resulted in port congestion. Roll-on roll-off ships can load and discharge quickly, taking up a minimum of quay space and overcoming congestion difficulties.

In 1999 OTAL was taken over by Bolloré

Bolloré

Bolloré is a French investment and industrial holding group headquartered in Puteaux, on the western outskirts of Paris, France. The company, a paper-energy-plantations-logistics conglomerate, employs 28,000 people around the world....

, a French investment and industrial holding group.

In 2006 CMA CGM purchases OT Africa Line, at the same time acquiring Delmas

Delmas (shipping company)

Delmas Shipping, based in Le Havre, France, is a containerized-freight and ro-ro shipping company, mainly carrying trade between western Europe and Africa...

, Setramar and a 50% stake in SudCargos to become the third largest shipping company in the world.