The Chinese government’s decision to reject the P3 Network may ease the threat to major container shippers in Taiwan and Asia, allowing them more time to boost their competitiveness.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Tuesday said it had rejected the application to establish a large-scale alliance between the three largest carriers in the world — Denmark’s A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S, Switzerland’s Mediterranean Shipping Co and France-based CMA CGM SA — saying the collaboration posed a threat to fair competition in the container shipping industry.
The Financial Times’ correspondent in Beijing reported yesterday that it was the first time that the ministry rejected a transaction that did not involve a Chinese company.
Photo: Wang Yi-hung, Taipei Times
The US Federal Maritime Commission had approved the network, and EU regulators had given their tacit approval, the paper said.
“Asia[n] liners may now be able to compete on more level ground,” Goldman Sachs analyst Ronald Keung (姜朗霆) said in a client note yesterday.
Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp (陽明海運) chairman Frank Lu (盧峰海) echoed that view.
“Asian container shippers may face lower negotiation pressure [on freight rates] and get more time to upgrade their fleets to save costs and boost profitability,” Lu told reporters after the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting.
However, major container shippers had made efforts to form their own partnerships in anticipation of the proposed P3 alliance, Lu said, including the G6 alliance, which has received all the necessary regulatory approvals, and the expected CKYHE alliance on the routes between East Asia and Europe.
The latest data provided by Alphaliner, a research institute for the container shipping sector, showed that the CKYHE alliance, which includes Yang Ming and Evergreen Marine Corp (長榮海運), took 23.6 percent of overall shipping capacity for lines between East Asia and Europe, with the G6 alliance at about 28 percent.
Yang Ming is scheduled to take delivery of 15 vessels of 14,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) over the next two years to upgrade its fleet’s energy efficiency.
The 15 vessels could help save as much as NT$6 billion (US$199.53 million) a year for the company compared with its current fleet, according to Yang Ming’s internal estimates.
As of last month, Yang Ming began to post a profit for this year, a company official said, adding that profitability in the third quarter — the traditional peak period for container shippers — will be key to determining whether the company returns to the black for the whole of the year.
Yang Ming posted NT$1.56 billion in net losses in the first three months of the year, or NT$0.48 per share, its filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange showed.
At a general meeting yesterday, shareholders approved Yang Ming’s management’s plan not to distribute dividends this year, after the shipper posted a net loss of NT$2.95 billion, or NT$0.9 per share, last year.
Evergreen Marine, the nation’s largest container shipper, announced earlier that it would not pay dividends, while Wan Hai Lines Ltd (萬海航運) shareholders have approved a cash dividend of NT$0.8 per share, making it the only listed container shipper in Taiwan to distribute dividends this year.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”