Qingdao: Container alliance CKYH has reached a collective decision to seriously cut back the speeds of its boxships. Announced by COSCO's Capt Wei Jiafu towards the end of this year's World Shipping Summit, the alliance, which also includes "K" Line, Yang Ming and Hanjin, will adopt super slow steaming, an initiative pioneered by Maersk Line two years ago.

'Facing the current world economic situation and environmental issues, we CKYH alliance ... have reached a consensus to first control all costs, second save energy resources and most importantly, reduce greenhouse emissions, by moving 50% of the fleet to super slow steaming,' said COSCO ceo and president Capt Wei Jiafu. 'We welcome more and more liner companies to join this issue,' Wei added. The members of the CKYH grouping have all been hard hit by the global container downturn. For instance, Hanjin Shipping today announced its third quarter results, suffering a US$338m net loss.

Source:seatradeasia-online