MOL President Ashida has focussed on the positive opportunities that the current shipping industry downturn presents, primarily as the Japanese transportation group's head predicts forecasts of over-tonnage in the container shipping sector will fail to materialise in the near future.
In Mr Ashida's 2009 New Year's message, he noted that many of the vessels on order have been and will be cancelled before their delivery. Furthermore, Chinese and Korean shipbuilding facilities that had been planning for rapid expansion are now being squeezed by a global credit crunch and have had to shelve plans for the time being.
"If the market had dropped one or two years later, the massive volume of new vessels would have been delivered," he said.
In addition, he noted that the scrapping of aged vessels, which were used longer than originally planned as the shipping industry had earlier been booming, "will be accelerated due to the recent market deterioration. These movements will reasonably and favourably contribute to adjust demand and supply balance of world tonnage," he said.
What's more, he said such action will help reduce overall costs, particularly expenses relating to vessel maintenance and repair work, bunker fuel costs and lubricants, all of which rose sharply when material and crude oil prices remained high for a few years. "We can also expect other issues such as shortage of seafarers and repair docks to be eased in line with the adjustment of the shipping market," added Mr Ashida.
In the short-term, MOL has been dealing with the recent decrease in sea freight trade volumes by cancelling expensive vessel charters, scrapping aged vessels in its fleet and laying up surplus vessels.
"As to our mid-term and long-term strategy, in order to prepare for future increase of demand in seaborne trade, we will fulfil our fleet plan to enhance and expand our competitive tonnage. This basic strategy remains unchanged."
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