SIMIC

The company also reported its highest ever revenue and liftings figures for OOCL, its core container shipping and logistics business, that surpassed even the outstanding outcome for 2020. The financial results, it said, were achieved in a context that is entirely without precedent.

The group's revenue for the calendar year reached $16.83 billion, more than double its income of $8.19 billion in 2020. Liner liftings also grew to 7.59 million TEU, up from 7.46 million TEU in 2020.

"Since the middle of 2020, our industry, indeed the entire supply chain, has been battling the same confluence of factors. After global economies began to reopen after lockdowns driven by the pandemic, levels of demand consistently outperformed expectations, especially, but not only, on routes from Asia to North America," the company said.

"Our relationships with our customers are key to our success. We have consistently worked to assist our customers through these challenging times, honouring our contractual commitments, seeking new ways to co-operate with them on an end-to-end basis, helping them navigate the challenges of schedule changes and congestion, and adding extra capacity where possible.

"We look forward to continuing to deepen and extend our relationships with our customers in this way."

As the company looks forward through the rest of 2022, it believes demand will remain resilient and congestion and disruption will continue to put pressure on the global supply chain.

"It seems unlikely that this situation will change materially during the first half of 2022, but we will continue to pay close attention to key leading indicators and to the forecasts and expectations of our customers," OOCL said.

Some of OOCL's operational highlights from the last year include the company launching its first multimodal container service from China to the US East Coast, to help meet customer demand.

The "innovative" product is a combination of the "Chang An" China-Europe block train service from Xian to Kaliningrad, Russia, with onward feeder to Bremerhaven, and then with OOCL ocean services from Bremerhaven to various ports on the US East Coast.

Back in November, the group also introduced its China Straits Service 3 (CSS3), strengthening its China to South-East Asia service network.

The launch of this new service aimed to supplement CSS1 and CSS2 which were launched in 2020.

Meanwhile, in 2021, The Cocso-owned firm placed orders for ten 16,000 TEU vessels, for a total cost of $1.58 billion, for delivery between the fourth quarter of 2024 and the fourth quarter of 2025.

"These vessels are added to twelve 23,000 TEU container ships that we already have under construction, for delivery during 2023-2024," said OOCL.

The company also praised the efforts and sacrifices made by its seafarers during the year by keeping "world trade flowing during this pandemic, and we all owe them a special debt of thanks".