Asia/Pacific News
Evergreen Marine Announces Cost Cutting Measures
Taiwanese container shipper Evergreen Marine Corp. (Taiwan) Ltd. says it is working to reduce the cost of filling containers by 10 percent this year as it tries to recover from losses, Taiwanese newspaper Taipei Times reports.
"The [fate of the] container shipping market will be determined by the clients this year, not by the shippers," said Evergreen Group vice chairman Bronson Hsieh.
Hsieh said the addition of new vessels into the global fleet has hurt the market despite a small improvement in the global economy that has increased demand somewhat.
Over the next three to four years, Evergreen plans to receive about 40 new fuel-efficient vessels, most of them around 8,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units (TEU), to help reduce its costs.
The company may also raise rates and impose bunker surcharges, and it is working to develop business in Latin America and Southeast Asia, where demand is rising.
In the first quarter of the year, the company lost NT$1.84 billion ($61 million), down from a loss of NT$3.14 billion ($105 million) in the same period last year.
A recent report by Moody's Investor Service said that container ships are being hurt by high fuel prices but that the industry can respond with efforts to limit capacity on the market.
