Dalian: The boss of Nan Tsing Container Lines is today’s Maritime CEO profile as well as the cover star of the latest issue of SinoShip magazine which has just launched. Nan Tsing is an established name in China’s domestic container shipping market becoming one of the largest intra-China players in the last few years.
Established in 1997 as a state run shipping company, Nan Tsing began to suffer financial difficulties in 2007. At the end of 2008, Zhejiang Tingyu Group, a large-scale multi-sector group based in Wenzhou, acquired Nan Tsing and made it a subsidiary of the group.
Pan Peicong, president of Tingyu Group, has since become the president of the Nan Tsing and the one of the very few female bosses in the Chinese shipping industry.
Pan was born into an entrepreneurial family. Her father, Pan Tingyu, is a famous tycoon in Zhejiang. Pan started to take major roles in the family group when she was just 18.
Nowadays Nan Tsing has developed into a major domestic shipping company in China and formed a large network nationwide. It operates more than 70 container vessels.
Pan likes to self-deprecatingly call herself a “rookie in the shipping industry”. Before her family group took over the company, she was mostly involved in manufacturing, publishing and movie investments. However, she turned Nan Tsing from a company with nearly RMB400m in debts into a profitable company in under a year from the takeover through a restructuring which optimized the company’s structure and shipping routes.
“Sometimes you don’t know where are you going next, and life will just take you somewhere,” Pan says on her sudden introduction to the world of shipping.
Pan admits that it was a difficult time when she had just taken over the company but she has made it through just about unscathed.
According to Pan, the secret of Nan Tsing is the unique shipping network it has developed. Nan Tsing has set up operations in several shipping hubs, and the feeder ports of each shipping hub and the shipping hub itself complement and support each other, which has increased the intensity of the company’s shipping routes, and the access rate between each port has also been greatly enhanced.
Currently Nan Tsing has set up shipping hubs in Jinzhou and Yantai in the north, Haikou, Guangzhou and Xiamen in the south, Chongqing in the west, Wuhan in the middle, and Shanghai in the east.
“Now we can ship cargo to Harbin in the northern edge of the country, and Chongqing and Kunming in the western reaches,” Pan says.
On the overall downturn in the shipping market, Pan says the company will not engage in the price war that dominates much of domestic liner trades. Instead Nan Tsing is focusing on becoming more involved in logistics.
“As one of the top domestic container shipping companies, sometimes we can act as a balancer of the market. We will step out when the market price is unhealthy,” Pan says.
According to Pan, Nan Tsing is currently further developing its shipping network through intermodal shipping services with connections to rail and road transportation and customising the best shipping package for clients.
The company is also speeding up the construction of an online shipping information platform to keep up with the information innovation trend in the shipping industry.
To access the full issue of SinoShip magazine free of charge, click here.
