China propelling shipping boom
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(Shanghai Daily news)
The past year has turned out to be a fruitful one for container shipping carriers worldwide operating services to and from China. With the country's robust trade growth, almost all of the players involved have increased both their shipment loads and profits.
Altogether, the country had a total container throughput of between 47 million and 48 million TEUs (twenty foot equivalent of units) for the year, a 32 percent increase from a year earlier, according to Su Xingang, the China Ministry of Communications senior official in charge of the water transportation sector.
Wang Lan, an industry analyst with Shanghai Shipping Exchange which compiles figures and weekly analysis on the Chinese container shipping market, said as far as he knew, most shipping operators, both domestic and foreign, had recorded profits from services linking China with other countries during the first three quarters of last year.
The mainland's two largest container shipping operators, China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company and China Shipping (Group) Company, reported they had transported record amounts of containers in 2003 and were expecting a full-year profit rise from the sector. Figures were not available as yet.
China Shipping, the country's second-largest shipping operator, has been moving closer to being among the world's top 10 container operators. It said it had experienced a 20 and 25 percent rise in container volume in 2003.
In 2002, it carried 2.8 million TEUs.
COSCO Container Lines Co Ltd, the container arm of the COSCO Group, said it carried its highest volume of containers last year since it was formed in 1998. Company officials declined to provide concrete figures.
"Our ships were full of freight for most of 2003," said a COSCO official who preferred anonymity. "People in the industry had predicted that the business would be hit by the war in Iraq and the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, but it proved to fare better than we had expected."
Both industry experts and carriers agreed that exports from Asia, especially from the Chinese mainland, to the United States and European countries were a major boost for the shipping industry.
China sold US$390.3 billion worth of goods abroad during the first 11 months of 2003, up 32.9 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to China Customs statistics.
The lucrative shipping market proved appealing to the world's top 20 container lines as all had set up branches in China to capitalize on a market seen as an engine for profit growth.
P&O Nedlloyd Container Line Ltd, the world's third-largest container carrier in terms of existing capacity, experienced a year-on-year increase of about 20 percent in both exported and imported freight volume it carried in the Chinese mainland last year.
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