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29 March 2024

NYK to halve container vessels fleet in five years

Published
By Sunil Kumar Singh

Japan-based NYK Line (Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha) plans to trim down its container vessels fleet by half in the next five years to pare down costs, according to a senior official of the international logistics and marine transportation company.

NYK President, Yasumi Kudo, said: "The problem lies in having an excess of long-term fixed assets. We must exercise constant care to minimise our long-term fixed assets, overcome any deficiency in such assets through short-term lease and thereby maintain our downward flexibility at all times.

"The part of our container vessels fleet, which constitutes such long-term fixed assets, will be slimmed down to half the number of vessels and its total space capacity will be trimmed to two-thirds by 2015.

"Nonetheless, this by no means rules out owning of container vessels and airplanes. Unless we possess such hard assets, we lose our means of differentiating ourselves from our competitors by making the most of innovation and ingenuity. Nor is it possible to build up flexible and expeditious services desired by our customers," said Kudo.

"The recent recovery in the air cargo transport sector has been accompanied by a sharp rise in customer enquiries and contracts for charter flights.

"But a lack of adequate hardware will make it impossible to properly cope with such a demand," he said.

 

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