JAPAN's No 1 shipping company MOL has posted a 15.7 per cent year-on-year profit fall to US$206.4 million, drawn on revenues of $11.15 billion for the first nine months of 2014.
MOL's container division fell into the red, a situation blamed on weak growth in transpacific and Asia-Europe cargo volumes, congested Asian ports as well as a congestion-causing labour dispute that increased costs in US west coast ports.
Said MOL: "Although cargo volumes from Asia to North American and to Europe and the freight market were comparatively firm, cargo volumes from Europe and the US to China and other Asian countries showed weak growth and the Asia-bound freight market remained stagnant.
"One the north south routes the freight market continued to struggle due to a widening gap between supply and demand resulting from the allocations of large vessels, particularly to the South American east coast," the statement said.
"Although cargo volumes and freight market on intra-Asia routes were underpinned by strong demand and comparatively stable, vessel congestion at various ports in Asia stayed unresolved and the adverse effect of vessels schedule remained.
"Although we worked to reduce operations costs by continuing slow steaming and reorganising routes a loss was recorded in this segment for the first nine months.
MOL also said that as Japanese car makers continue to move production outside of Japan, the number of cars exported continued to decline, resulting in lower income for its car carrier division.
Japan's No 2 container shipping line, NYK, posted a 0.3 per cent year-on-year net profit increase, somewhat spoiled by an antitrust fine in the nine months ending December 31, to total US$268 million, a sum drawn from revenues of $16.8 billion, which rose 14.4 per cent.
NYK found that the container shipping market conditions remained weak due to strong pressure of supply on the back of the completion and deployment of new ultra large box ships.
"On transpacific routes, thanks to a favourable US economy, demand capacity transitioned steadily, resulting in a comparatively favourable freight rate," said the NYK statement.
Japan's No 3 container shipping company, "K" Line, posted a 110 per cent year-on-year increase in net profit in the nine months ending December 31, to total US$273.8 million, drawn from revenues of 8.4 billion, which increased 10 per cent.
"For the shipping industry, negative factors included the continuing market slump in the dry bulk business and the declining trend in export volume of finished vehicles from Japan," said the "K" Line statement.
"Container cargo volumes were up around seven per cent year on year on the Asia-North America service and around nine per cent on the Asia-Europe service, but declined by around four per cent on both the intra-Asia and north-south services," "K" Line said.