COSCO Shipping Lines

COSCO SHIPPING Lines Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 中远海运集运) is a Chinese international container transportation and shipping company. It is a subsidiary of COSCO Shipping Holdings, and its parent company is China's state-owned COSCO Shipping.

In April 1961 China's Ministry of Communications established China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) as a state-owned ocean shipping enterprise in Beijing. In 1964 China Ocean Shipping Co. established a subsidiary in Shanghai, COSCO Shanghai, which later specialized in container shipping.

In 1978, COSCO Shanghai's MV Ping Xiang Cheng transported 162 TEU from Shanghai to Sydney, Australia, which was the first international container voyage by a Chinese company. Thereafter, COSCO Shanghai commenced a monthly container service running two 200 TEU container ships between Shanghai, Xingang, Sydney, and Melbourne.^{[citation needed]}

In 1982 COSCO Shanghai began regular trans-Pacific container services and in 1983 COSCO Shanghai started a new container trade route connecting Tianjin Port and Shanghai with ports in West Europe.

In 1994, COSCO Container Line Limited (COSCON), was formed to conduct COSCO's container operations in collaboration with regional subsidiaries such as the Shanghai branch. In November 1997, COSCON merged with COSCO Shanghai and became the sole container shipping subsidiary of COSCO. That same year, the Chinese government founded the SOE China Shipping Group along with its container shipping subsidiary, China Shipping Container Lines (CSCL).

CSCL grew its business rapidly under the leadership of shipping industry veteran, Captain Li Kelin. The company saw its TEU market share increase 126% between 2000 and 2006, and by 2007 it became the sixth largest container transportation company in the world in terms of fleet capacity.

COSCON established local offices and agencies in 160 countries. In North America, the company built a large intermodal network by investing in thousands of marine container chassis and contracting with trucking companies and major North American railroads. Likewise, CSCL developed a large intermodal network in the US, and in 2001 BNSF Railway announced a new double-stack service to transport China Shipping containers from the Port of Los Angeles to the BNSF Chicago yards.

In July 2007, COSCON named the 10,000 TEU COSCO Asia at HHI shipyard in Ulsan. It was the largest container ship in COSCO's fleet at the time and the company later took delivery of three other 10,000 TEU ships. The 10,000 TEU vessels were highly automated and classed by Lloyd's Register to the highest environmental safety standards.