NYK Line’s new president, Tadaaki Naito (pictured), who was appointed to the role last week, has reaffirmed the company’s commitment to look at business diversification and expansion into logistics, something he described as essential for continued growth in the 21st century.
Speaking last Thursday (16 April) at his inauguration, Naito said the company had become “a diverse, integrated logistics company focusing on all areas of distribution, rather than relying on the liner trade alone”. However, he pointed to the need for the company to accurately gauge the needs of the growth regions around the world in providing services.
“We expect that the Asia region and emerging nations such as the BRICs will continue to show high growth rates going forward,” said Naito. “Because of this, we must accurately ascertain the needs of these growth regions and continue the global development of our business.”
Naito said that NYK was still burdened by the global recession thanks in part to the degree of the market contraction at a time of expansion for the company up to 2008, something that had left it with “excessive investment”.
“Considering that we are still burdened by this legacy, I believe that it is important to calmly and prudently verify in our investment decision-making process that we are fully in control of business profitability, or in other words, that we are not excessively dependent on factors outside our control,” said Naito. He went on to say that the company needed a rational approach to risk-taking.
At the same time as stressing a rational approach Naito highlighted the creative aspect of NYK’s medium term management plan, entitled More Than Shipping 2018.
“The reason that we included ‘creative solutions’ as a subtitle to the current medium-term management plan is that we believe that solving problems for our customers is the key for a transportation company like NYK to gain a competitive advantage,” he said. “I would like to emphasise that providing creative solutions doesn’t mean simply aiming to innovate on the technological side. It is more than just technical capabilities. I believe that this is about our creative capabilities in how we use and how we integrate our knowledge and expertise in terms of reaching the solutions that our customers need.”
This week NYK has announced it will team up with APL and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL) to start a new service network — the AMC (Asia Mexico Colombia Express) Service. The service will start from May 22 linking Asia, Mexico and the west coast of South America.
Eight 6,000 TEU containerships will be deployed on the service providing a short 17-day lead time between Hong Kong and Manzanillo, Mexico. The service will have a 56 day round service running on a weekly basis.
Last month the company expended its service network linking Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam. That service is independently operated by NYK using three 2,700 TEU containerships.
