In container movement July used to be seen strong demand toward the peak season of the summer but this year such impetus has not been felt. Shipping Lines have stopped securing L/T lease from leasing companies while they have been facing a difficulty of taking them out of the factories. The factory inventory in China seems to have been increasing and reached over 500,000 teu in stock. Shipping lines and leasing companies have been taking a wait and see attitude in purchasing new containers, especially for leasing companies seem to be more cautious. As a result the new 20f price would be less than $2700 per unit. Container makers would be forced to reduce the container price to fill the production line of the factories. The situation would make shipping lines and leasing companies to refrain from buying as they would expect the price to be more discounted in the future.
The operation ratio of leasing companies would be in downtrend but it has still been maintained around 92~95%. Container returned by shipping lines to leasing companies after expiring L/Ts would be getting old but most of them would be mainly concluded to return to Asia and China where steady demand for old containers exists. Therefore, they would be sold in the 2nd hand market without staying long idling in the depots. The expired L/T containers returned in Europe and North America seem to be also in popular for 2nd hand containers in the market. Therefore, the return in Europe and North America would not be a big problem these days.
The next is the purchase situation in the Top 10 leasing companies in 2012. 
Let’s see how many containers Top 10 leasing companies possess as of the end June of 2012. 
You could see that Leasing companies would be in oligopoly and polarization of leasing companies into the big and the small size. Textainer is becoming huge. In view of the healthy container leasing market the problem of oligopoly and polarization of big and small would be the cause of the trouble in the future. In the present market it would be hard for the small leasing companies to start business in the market. It would pay for their laziness in the future that shipping lines would continuously rely on the leasing companies who offer cheaper rate. If shipping lines expect the leasing companies to be strong supporter to them in the future they should make them their pro-supporters in order to diversify their risk of securing leasing containers as they want. In addition they should increase their own fleet ratio.
We, EF Internationl are aiming at the general trading company not only buying and selling containers but all business related to container. Chassis sales has been added to our agency business as we have undertaken the agent in Japan of Korean middle scale chassis maker, “ Mirai Special Vehicle Co., Ltd ” in June. Their standard specification of chassis seems to be high and its quality would be as good as one made in Japan but 20~30% cheaper than Japan made. To sell chassis in Japan is our challenge.
Mirai Special Vehicle is the 4th agency business to us after Kukdong MES/JJ MES, Future Box Corporation(FBC), TydenBrooks. The products which we have dealt with are new and old dry containers, Open Top, Flat Rack, Reefer Container, Tank Container. We would like to aggressively promote more old ISO Reefer Container and ISO Tank Container in the domestic market. At the same time, we would like to popularize Hybrid Open Top and Sliding Door Container which FBC has the patent in by applying them to the commercial van trucks. The ordinary door, container would be possibly replaced with Sliding Door Container in the near future. Thus, the future of Sliding Door Container would be quite bright. The strong support by many shippers would be encouraging us a lot. SuperBolt4, one of high quality and strong security seals as the symbol of TydenBrooks which other seal makers could not follow would be used by Toyota, Panasonic etc who are important customers to shipping lines. It would be quite fun to add Mirai Chassis to our promotion list. I believe that there is high potential in Mirai Chassis because the existing Tank truck would be replaced with ISO tank in the future. At the same time we would start to take back the old chassis in order to promote the new chassis.
We would like to emphasize on consulting business related to container by making the best use of our staff’s experience, knowhow, knowledge and our personal connections. There might be the countless business possibility in harbor equipments, shipping and transportation. As per our customers’ request we would like to dedicate ourselves to bridging between Japan and overseas and we would like to entrust our big dream to our future staff.
We are planning to move to the new office late July. We have been busy in preparation of relocation these days. It is located 5 minutes from JR Higashikanagawa station. It is near from the current office. We would like to work hard for high quality service which would make our customers happy in doing business with us after moving to the new office.