Cosco Shipping Lines, the container shipping unit of China Cosco Shipping Group, has appointed Yang Zhijian as the new managing director of the company. Yang will replace Wang Haimin, who was promoted as vice president of Cosco Shipping Group in February and had been holding the two concurrent positions during the transition period.
Yang has been serving in Cosco for more than 30 years and his most recent position was managing Director of Cosco Shipping Bulk. Cosco’s container shipping unit is the third largest in the world, and the largest in Asia.
In terms of value, global seaborne container trade is believed to account for approximately 60 percent of all world seaborne trade, which was valued at around 12 trillion U.S. dollars in 2017. While the quantity of goods carried by containers has risen from around 102 million metric tons in 1980 to about 1.83 billion metric tons in 2017, vessels have likewise increased their capacity. Between 1980 and 2018, the dead weight tonnage of container ships has grown from about 11 million metric tons to around 253 million metric tons.
As of July 2016, the global cellular container ship fleet had the capacity to carry some 20 million standard containers. With a total capacity of around four million TEUs,
Danish shipping line APM-Maersk is currently the largest container-shipping company globally, followed by MSC, COSCO, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd.
Germany's Hapag-Lloyd went public in 2015, Maersk acquired Germany's Hamburg Süd in 2017.
