ONE holds its plus
The major Japanese containers shipping company, having got off to a bumpy start in April 2018, promised a better financial year than 2018 / 2019. It looks as if the Japanese can keep their word – and also largely defy the ‘Wuhan coronavirus’ in China.
Ocean Network Express (ONE), the alliance of Japan’s three major container shipping lines Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK), Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), and K Line, made a profit in the third quarter of its current financial year, which runs from the beginning of April 2019 until the end of March of 2020.
The maritime corporation ended the quarter with a rather modest profit of USD 5 million. In the first three quarters of the fiscal year, the Japanese entity thus achieved sales worth approximately USD 2.9 billion (USD 8.9 billion) and profits of around USD 131 million – thus successfully implementing their efforts of achieving the turnaround in this period, as projected.
Operational measures in China
It would appear that the shipping group in the container segment, which was launched in April 2018, has now got its initial operational difficulties under control. In the third quarter of the 2018 / 2019 financial year, ONE posted a loss of USD 179 million, and in the first three quarters of the same financial year, the deficit even came to USD 490 million. So against this background the success achieved in this latest period under review should therefore not be underestimated, with the enterprise doing a bit better than breaking even with its final result.
With regard to the ‘Wuhan coronavirus’, ONE’s executive management team has now set up a special task force and activated what it calls its ‘business continuity plan’ (BCP), which structures its overall response to this unforeseen event.
In a recent press release the shipping company particularly underlined the fact that, even since the end of the extended Chinese new year holiday in February, all of ONE’s China branches have had local or remote staff available, to ensure that ongoing operations can be completed and to take bookings for future shipments.
The only exception were the terminals in Hubei province, including its capital Wuhan. All other regions in China are continuing their normal logistics processes and operations.
With a fleet capacity of around 1.6 million teu, ONE is the sixth-largest container shipping line worldwide. Together with Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd, the Taiwanese shipping line Yang Ming and the South Korean operator Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM, from April onwards, see also page 8 of ITJ 5-6 / 2020), they form ‘The Alliance’ shipping consortium.
