Hanjin Shipping Global stops operations in Viet Nam
Hanjin Shipping Global stops operations in Viet Nam
The Vietnamese Representative Office of Hanjin Shipping Global, South Korea's giant container shipping company, announced that it would not accept any new booking of freight orders from August 31.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, bankruptcy of the Hanjin shipping line would possibly affect local businesses' export and import shipping and receiving activities.
The ministry recommended businesses to quickly complete procedures to receive imported goods at the ports and take them out of the Hanjin containers. With regard to export goods which were already inside the firm's containers, the ministry asked businesses to get back the goods as soon as possible and contact their foreign partners to find ways to change to other shipping firms and to organise the goods booking schedule.
Those batches of goods that had already been shipped, the businesses were told to keep in touch with the Hanjin representative office in Viet Nam to keep track of the itinerary and co-ordinate with their foreign partners to ensure the goods were received at the ports on time.
The ministry, in co-ordination with the Ministry of Transport, said it would direct the ports to support businesses to ship and receive goods to avoid affecting the businesses' schedule and traffic congestion at the sea ports.
According to the Associated Press, Hanjin, the world's seventh-largest container shipping company, filed for bankruptcy protection on August 31 and stopped accepting new cargo. With its assets being frozen, ships from China to Canada were refused permission to offload or take aboard containers because there were no guarantees that tugboat pilots or stevedores would be paid. This also led to a rise in shipping rates and could also hurt some trucking firms with contracts to pick up goods from Hanjin ships.
The South Korean giant represents nearly 8 per cent of the trans-Pacific trade volume for the US market. While some retailers may already be hit with their merchandise for the holiday season getting delayed, experts say it is important for the issue to be resolved before the critical shipping month of October.
