Hanjin Shipping Co, South Korea’s largest shipping line, and China Shipping (Group) Co (中國海運集團) said they were close to ordering new vessels as world trade rebounds from the global recession.
Hanjin may announce a deal for mid-sized container ships by as early as year-end, chief executive Kim Young-min told a conference in Guangzhou, China, yesterday.
China Shipping will place an order soon, president Li Shaode (李紹德) said at the same event, but declined to say which type of ships the group was looking at.
Evergreen Group (長榮集團) is also close to ordering about 10 ships, as part of its plans to buy 100, as global trade recovers from a downturn last year that caused industrywide losses.
Global container-shipping volume could jump as much as 8 percent next year, as economic growth in the US and Europe spurs demand for Asian-made goods, Kim said.
“The worst is over for Asian shipping lines, so it’s a good time to order vessels,” said Minoru Matsuno, president of Value Search Asset Management Co, a Tokyo-based investment advisory firm.
“At the same time, the industry needs to ensure it doesn’t repeat the overcapacity mistakes that helped hammer rates last year,” he said.
Evergreen Group, Asia’s largest container line, plans to order ships able to hold about 8,000 containers, vice chairman Bronson Hsieh (謝志堅) said.
The Taiwan-based firm has ordered 20 similar vessels, worth about US$2 billion, from Samsung Heavy Industries Co since June. Second-ranked Neptune Orient Lines Ltd has ordered 12 ships from Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co during the same period.
The global economy is recovering and the shipping market is “roaring,” Wei Jiafu (魏家福), chairman of China Cosco Holdings Co (中國遠洋控股), Asia’s biggest shipping line by market value, said at the Guangzhou conference.
However, the industry needs to adopt a “more rational mentality” to prevent a glut of new vessels from dampening rates, he said.
China Cosco has no plans to order vessels this year, and it will assess market conditions before deciding on fleet plans next year, he said.
Sinotrans & CSC Holdings Co (中外運航運) plans to adjust orders in segments where there is overcapacity, president Zhao Hu-xiang (趙滬湘) said, but declined to elaborate.
The company is China’s third-largest state-controlled shipping group behind China Cosco parent, China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co, and China Shipping.
Shipping lines have eased overcapacity by scrapping vessels and operating ships more slowly. This reduces capacity as the same number of vessel make fewer trips and also cuts back on fuel usage.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS