[041219.EN.SEA] COSCO SHIPPING Moves Up In The World From Fourth to Third Place

COSCO SHIPPING Lines has had a big year in 2019 as it became widely acknowledged that it was now the world's third biggest international container carrier having moved up from fourth place.

This came about when all the calculations were in with the acquisition of Hong Kong's Orient Overseas (International) Ltd (OOIL), the parent company of Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL).

Shanghai-based COSCO SHIPPING Lines, affiliated with COSCO SHIPPING Group, was born with the integrated container businesses of CSCL (China Shipping Container Line) and its predecessor Cosco, which has been up for business since March, 2016.

COSCO SHIPPING Lines is a fully-owned subsidiary of COSCO SHIPPING Holding, registered in China (Shanghai) Free-trade Experimental Area with a registered capital of CNY15.96 billion (US$2.26 billion).

Today, COSCO SHIPPING Lines practices the Ocean & Plus strategy to enhance the ocean service quality continuously. If a shipping instruction is received timely and completely, the company is ready to offer draft bill of lading in eight working hours after submission and issue original bill of lading one working day after the vessel departs

In March of this year, 99.95 per cent of draft bills of lading were offered in eight working hours worldwide. Average time is 1.7 hours. Best-performing times were Wuhan (19 minutes), Dalian (20 minutes) and Hong Kong (29 minutes).

To optimise document services, COSCO SHIPPING Lines is building global documentation teams to improve bill of lading preparation and issuance, one-stop online document solutions, enhanced global document compliance management and strengthened capacity customer's specific document requirements.

COSCO SHIPPING Lines has also expanded the business scale, consolidated the position in the industry. Meanwhile, the service network has also been further improved.

By the end of 2018, the company has a total of 376 container vessels, with a total capacity of 2.1 million TEU, ranking the fourth place in the world, and the first place in the Asia. COSCO SHIPPING Lines operates 362 international and domestic shipping routes, consisting of 228 international services (including international feeder services), 47 domestic services, 87 Yangtze River and Pearl River shipping services, covering 329 ports in 100 countries and regions worldwide.

At the end of March this year, the fleet included 478 container vessels, with a total shipping capacity of 2,775,313 TEU. Cosco also had nine container vessels on order with an aggregate capacity of 159,421 TEU.

COSCO SHIPPING Holding handled 30.6 million TEU at its facilities in the first quarter of 2019 (about 6.67 million TEU from terminals it controlled and 23.95 million TEU in terminals in which it is an investor).

Source : HKSG.