Meratus Kutai, the first vessel deployed on Meratus' new CIDX service, made its maiden call at SP-ITC Terminal in Ho Chi Minh City on 28 September 2026. The call marks the commercial start of a direct maritime link between Vietnam, Indonesia, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea — a trade corridor that until now lacked a dedicated string.

The CIDX rotation gives Vietnamese exporters a scheduled connection into Indonesia and markets across the Southwest Pacific without transshipment through Singapore or other regional hubs. For Indonesian shippers, the service opens a direct gateway into Vietnam's manufacturing heartland via Ho Chi Minh City. Hai An Container Transport (HACT) is acting as Meratus' shipping agent in Vietnam, pairing the Indonesian carrier's regional network with a local partner that knows the port and its customers.

The terminal used the maiden call to showcase what it can already handle and where it is heading. SP-ITC presented its current operational capabilities to visiting executives and laid out plans for further investment and expansion. The centerpiece of that roadmap is a deep-water port project in the Cai Mep area — the downstream complex that already handles most of Vietnam's direct deep-sea calls from Europe and North America.

That ambition matters for the competitive map of southern Vietnam. A deep-water facility under the SP-ITC umbrella would add mainline-capable capacity to a river system currently dominated by Cat Lai, and it would give carriers like Meratus room to upsize vessels as the Vietnam–Indonesia trade matures. For now, the terminal's river location suits the CIDX service's regional profile and its feeder-scale tonnage.

HACT, for its part, is not treating the agency contract as a one-off. The Vietnamese company outlined plans to expand its fleet and international network during the call, and it intends to develop additional domestic and international services calling at SP-ITC. That commitment signals the terminal is positioned to become a recurring fixture on HACT's network map rather than a single-service berth.

The commercial logic for shippers is straightforward. Vietnam's trade with Indonesia has grown steadily as both economies industrialize in complementary directions — Vietnamese electronics and textiles moving south, Indonesian raw materials and consumer goods moving north. Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea add smaller but underserved volumes that typically pay a premium for unreliable or indirect routing. A named, scheduled service with a local agent reduces those friction points: shorter transit times, more predictable equipment positioning, and a single point of accountability at both ends.

For Meratus, one of Indonesia's strongest domestic and regional operators, the CIDX launch extends a strategy of building out intra-Asia strings that the big alliances largely ignore. These secondary trades offer less competition and stickier customers, provided the operator can maintain schedule integrity on port pairs with thinner infrastructure.

Representatives from SP-ITC welcomed the vessel's crew and officials from Meratus and HACT during the call, the usual protocol that accompanies a first visit. The substance came in the commercial presentations on either side of it.

The immediate test for CIDX will be utilization on the northbound leg out of Ho Chi Minh City and whether HACT can generate enough Vietnamese base cargo to keep the string profitable through the ramp-up period. Longer term, the combination of Meratus' regional reach, HACT's fleet expansion plans and SP-ITC's Cai Mep deep-water project points toward a gradual scaling of Vietnam's presence in Southwest Pacific trades.