China is very short of containers. It is the current situation that all leasing containers returned by shipping lines in China are immediately booked by other shipping lines. Therefore, leasing companies have put containers targeted for sale into a normal lease after repair. As a result, the containers for sale are short. The sale prices of used containers in China have risen. On the other hand, it seems that new containers of leasing companies have been concluded in Long Term Lease with shipping lines right after off line of production. It is said that the 70~80 percent of the present new containers in factories in China have been already fixed at the shipping company by a long-term lease. Meanwhile, the leasing companies seem to have been trouble with a container procurement fund. Because the leasing companies had faced the problem in deteriorating long term lease rates under severe competition of leasing companies in the past, which made them to drop growth of their profit drastically. Besides, the bankruptcy of Hanjin Shipping have still been a lasting effect of recovering containers to the leasing companies.
The new containers of the whole land of China have been obligatorily used to the water based paint from April of this year. The makers have shifted the production line to water-based paint from solvent system paint. Two months passed, and the new container production of the water-based paint seems to have been mass-produced smoothly. The new container price seems to have settled down with $ 2,100 per 20f. A certain leasing company refrained from ordering until the quality of the water-based paint containers with the maker is confirmed but they could not watch it calmly for current container demand of China and began ordering. On the other hand, a certain major leasing company which made much of quality has tried to make them different from others by ordering with large number of containers in order to anticipate the trend of strong demand of this year. Therefore, they would place an order for the new containers with the container makers without ordering results in the past and secure quantity if there is a space of production lines. It is said that major leasing company has already placed an order for 450,000 TEU in one company
The leasing companies could be sorted by 3 type of the companies: one with the financial power that can purchase a container speculatively same as before, 2nd one which can recruit the container purchase fund if the long-term lease contract with the shipping companies are fixed and 3rd one which would take an attitude of wait and see with the current fleet until the market would change favorably. The present new container stock in Chinese container makers is less than 550,000 TEU. It decreases as 70,000 TEU from last month.
What is the cause of the lack of container in this China? There is not emergency demand. I think that various factors are connected with each other, and the present demand occurs. Of course export from Asia to North America and Europe increase towards summer. However, the first factor is to say that shipping lines could not forward empty containers to China and demand places in Asia as they want. The big cause is to be that the following new alliance started from April 1.
| Alliance name | Shipping Lines | Quantity of loading capacity share |
| 2M | Maersk, MSC 2 companies |
27.3％ |
| Ocean Alliance | CMA-CGM(to buy APL)、OOCL、Evergreen COSCO (merged with China Shipping) 4 companies |
23.5％ |
| The Alliance | NYK, MOL, K Line, Yang-Ming Hapag-Llyd（to unite UASC） 5 companies |
18％ |
Before April 1 this year 4 Alliances were formed like 2M (Maersk, MSC), O3 (CMA-CGM, China Shipping, UASC), G6 (NYK, MOL, Hapag-Lloyd, OOCL, APL, HMM) and CKYHE (COSCO, K Line, Yang Ming, Hanjin, Evergreen) but after that 4 Alliances have been formed into 3 Alliances. It was resulted that a member of CKYHE had been incorporated in other Alliances. Besides, 2 Alliances, Ocean Alliance and The Alliance have been formed in one year after it was formally announced. Of course it was in the short period of time for preparation even though it had been carefully prepared before announcement. It could be true that each of the Alliance members might have no time in thinking of how to promote empty containers back to China and Asia because they have been busy in dealing with the various problems like replacing with newly assigned ships, cascading the ships to other routes under the new Alliance and with larger ships at the new service routes by changing the port of call. Besides, it could be said that the bankruptcy of Hanjin Shipping occurred at the end of Aug. last year should have made reorganization of the Alliances complicated, which has caused lack of container in China and container demand places these days. The lack of container in China and Asia seems to continue for a while looking at the confusion of the inventory of the current shipping lines.
On May 31, Japanese 3 Shipping Lines announced the name of the unification liner company. It is “Ocean Network Express”. It becomes “ONE” when we examine an initial and the feeling of 3 Shipping Lines’ passion got through to us. A holding company is put in Tokyo and their head office of the business operator is located in Singapore.
We could not miss geographical superiority of Singapore and their tax break system for the shipping lines. In addition, it is the proper result because NYK and K Line, 2 shipping lines have already moved the head office function of the containership business in Singapore. The new company anticipates a unification effect of approximately 110 billion yen and will start their service in next April. We want them to respect Japanese cooperation mind of “Harmony” among them while challenging the new things innovatively and we will expect that they will bring the new breath and power for world liner business.