Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運) is withdrawing 31 aging ships from its fleet to cope with slumping demand, a company official said yesterday.
Asia’s largest container shipper also said it would raise rates on Asia-US routes next month, after an alliance of major container shipping lines reached a deal on Tuesday, an Evergreen’s public relations official said by telephone.
Evergreen is scheduled to dismantle one-sixth of its 180 ships through 2013, Eric Lin (林司忠) said, confirming reports carried by two local business dailies yesterday.
Under the plan, the company is to return some chartered ships to their owners when their leases expire and dismantle other ships more than 26 years old and sell them as scrap metal, Lin said.
Jack Yen (顏火燿), president of Evergreen Marine, said in a stock exchange filing later yesterday that the 31 container ships destined for dismantlement are 20 G-type ships and 11 GX-type ships.
The G-type ships, with a capacity of 2,728 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), and GX-type ships, with a capacity of 3,428 TEUs, were built between 1983 and 1988, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported.
The move came as Evergreen chairman Chang Jung-fa (張榮發) said in a recent interview with Japan’s Kaiji Press that this year would be the most difficult year for the shipping industry, which has been struggling with overcapacity and falling volume, the Commercial Times reported.
However, the company, like other major shipping lines in the world, was also under pressure from declining rates, especially as freight prices on some US and European routes are already at below cost price.
The Transpacific Stabilization Agreement (TSA), of which Evergreen is a member, announced on Tuesday that the shipping alliance plans to raise US$500 for each 40-foot box on Asia-US routes beginning on Aug. 10. The shippers will also raise fuel levies and may add peak-season surcharges, the 14-member group said.
Lin said Evergreen would raise the rates next month, even though the plan is a “voluntary guideline” for TSA members. He did not elaborate on the increased fuel levies and surcharges.
On July 1, Evergreen said it and Cosco Container Industries Ltd (中遠集裝箱運輸公司) had agreed to combine their services on Far East-South America routes and Far East-Africa Express routes into a new service, to cope with soaring bunker prices in light of deteriorating market conditions.
The new service, which started on Monday, operates with a total of 11 3,500 TEU vessels, with seven vessels from Evergreen and four from Cosco Container, Evergreen said on its Web site.
Real estate agent and property developer JSL Construction & Development Co (愛山林) led the average compensation rankings among companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) last year, while contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) finished 14th. JSL Construction paid its employees total average compensation of NT$4.78 million (US$159,701), down 13.5 percent from a year earlier, but still ahead of the most profitable listed tech giants, including TSMC, TWSE data showed. Last year, the average compensation (which includes salary, overtime, bonuses and allowances) paid by TSMC rose 21.6 percent to reach about NT$3.33 million, lifting its ranking by 10 notches
Popular vape brands such as Geek Bar might get more expensive in the US — if you can find them at all. Shipments of vapes from China to the US ground to a near halt last month from a year ago, official data showed, hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and a crackdown on unauthorized e-cigarettes in the world’s biggest market for smoking alternatives. That includes Geek Bar, a brand of flavored vapes that is not authorized to sell in the US, but which had been widely available due to porous import controls. One retailer, who asked not to be named, because
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
RSS