Matson Navigation, the US shipping firm operating in the Pacific, is ‘actively exploring opportunities’ for a second route to China. Last year the company invested $365 million in vessels, containers and terminal assets to inaugurate the China-America route. This has port calls in Ningbo and Shanghai and then on to Long Beach, California.

Allen Donae, the company’s chairman says that the 15-month-old container shipping route ‘exceeded our expectations’, with revenue now accounting for about 15% of Matson’s business turnover.

The weekly service, which handles 50,000 containers annually, passes through Ningbo and Shanghai and then takes 11 days to get to Long Beach.

James Andrasick, Matson’s president and CEO, said, ‘Our first route is near capacity but we have no plan to add capacity to the existing route at the moment.’ But a second China-US route is now part of the company’s strategic planning. No specific route has yet been chosen.

Matson has no plan to invest in Chinese ports as other international shipping giants, such as Maersk, have done in China. James Andrasick said, ‘We are a relatively smaller player in the Chinese market and we don’t want to run before we can walk.’
Source: Cargo News Asia