COSCO Shipping Ports (CSP) has achieved improved throughput and earnings in the third quarter of 2020 in the face of continuing challenges raised by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The shipping company has announced in its latest quarterly report revenues of US$270 million, gross profits of US$70.5 million and total throughput of 33.4 million TEU, marking year-on-year increases of 6%, 5.9% and 3.3% respectively.
This year, the Chinese group is continuing to actively implement its “Lean Operations” strategy and adopt a series of measures, such as control cost and improve efficiency.
In particular, COSCO Shipping Ports is actively controlling costs and has introduced “cost per TEU” in the operations and management of terminals, in order to set up operational cost control targets for terminals in which the group has controlling stakes.
The overall 2020 figures up to this moment for the shipping group show a total container throughput of 91 million TEU, which is a moderate year-on-year decline of 1.2%. On the other hand, financial numbers are significantly more affected by the virus pandemic with a 6.5% decrease in nine-month revenues to US$722.7 million, and a 22.9% plunge in gross profits to US$169.6 million for the same period.
Furthermore, the company stated it continues to fine-tune its cost analysis model, analyse the composition and percentage of terminal costs, establish operational cost control targets and set up cost control plans.
Additionally, the firm aims to cultivate the mindset of cost orientation in marketing and daily operations, formulate feasible, scientific and effective measures with clear targets, develop cost-optimising procedures to enhance its competitive advantage in cost reduction.
In terms of cost control, domestic terminals have shown preliminary achievements, according to the company. “As the utilisation rate of overseas newly-developed terminals continues to increase and the epidemic gradually starts to be under control, overseas terminals are expected to achieve an improvement in reducing costs per TEU,” said CSP.
Moreover, the Hong Kong-based company added that it endeavors to innovate sales and marketing strategies and enhance the overall sales and marketing, build a customer value analysis model to mainly analyse the profit contribution from each type of container of each shipping company.
In this way it aims to “develop more effective marketing and negotiation strategies based on each terminal’s situation, as well as further tap customer value and improve terminals’ throughput and revenue.”
