The author | brother cat
The source | Big Cat Finance
01
One of the most profitable industries of the year, without them, is shipping!
For example, the Sino-US route: a 40-foot (12-meter-long, 2.3-meter-wide, 2.4-meter-high) container, shipped from Ningbo Bay to The Pretty Country in January last year, was about $1,500, but just in August this year, it directly exceeded $20,000, and now it is $25,000, up 16 times, and the freight of 300 containers is almost enough to buy a ship.
Since the epidemic, freight rates have repeatedly risen
The first peak was the first large-scale outbreak overseas in March and June last year, which triggered the suspension of production and work in various countries, and then the overseas epidemic gradually improved, and freight rates fell back a lot.
However, this year, there have been two new outbreaks overseas, coupled with the Factuel Suez Canal, which accounts for 14% of the world's maritime trade, has been cut off by the "Changzhi", triggering the "century of blockage", followed by the epidemic in Shenzhen Yantian Port, which carries 1/4 of the country's trade with the United States (last year's container throughput was nearly 50% more than that of Los Angeles, the busiest in the United States).
Of course, there are other reasons, such as Europe and the United States to "print money directly to the people to send money" to carry forward, causing a big problem - "I receive unemployment benefits higher than wages, what class to go to" - the result of the lack of basic jobs at the bottom, many factories can not recruit workers, trucks can not find drivers, the result has triggered a supply chain crisis (if you are interested, you can see another article of Brother Cat "Chicken Famine is coming!"). Thousands of stores are waiting to close, and the KFC dilemma is not simple)."
In recent weeks, U.S. workers have also embarked on a general strike of sheer scale and involvement in a wide range of industries, including 60,000 members of the International Theater Stage Employee Union in Hollywood, about 31,000 employees at Caesars Medical Facilities in Western California and Oregon, more than 10,000 employees at 14 factories of agricultural machinery maker Deere & Co., more than 2,000 employees at the Buffalo Charity Hospital in New York, and 1,400 workers at Kellogg Grains... This is naturally indispensable to the port terminal, the result is that no one unloads the goods, the cargo ships arriving at the port are waiting, and there is no ship to respond to the shipment in other places.
After just a few rounds of cannons, the freight rate was completely pulled up.
02
China's largest shipping company China COSCO (now COSCO Offshore Holdings) in the first three quarters of this year reached a net profit of 67.5 billion, an increase of 16 times year-on-year, the stock price increased by zero within a year, and many research reports directly hit the target of "annual net profit of 100 billion yuan".
Moreover, not only the shipping companies make money, but even the intermediaries who solicit customers by sea, the freight forwarders, make more money. Some freight forwarding companies revealed that their employees with good performance can earn more than 100,000 yuan a month.
Usually freight forwarder is to help the ship to find customers to transport goods, the function is similar to Didi taxi, has now been poured, all kinds of companies that need to ship are begging the freight forwarder to help them grab the position on the ship, and even some freight forwarders have "transformed" scalpers, increasing the price by 3,000 US dollars on behalf of customers to grab the space.
Shipping forced to this, has some rush to deliver the manufacturers have moved other brains, to land, air, is still not enough. No, the China-Europe express train began to implement the lottery number early to take the position:
(Photo from social media video screenshot, taken at the 3rd China-Europe Express & Eurasian Multimodal Transport Summit)
There are even some anxious companies that are already using planes to pull fully loaded shipping containers in China. In 2019, it was reported that the freight rate of trans-Pacific containers to the west coast and east coast of the United States was about $1500 and $2500, respectively, when air freight was 12 times more expensive than sea freight. The current maritime price has long exceeded the air freight price at that time, and the air freight is much faster, so the recent air freight has been directly brought to the fire, and the volume and price have risen together.
This line, really in line with that sentence, ten years do not open to eat for ten years!
However, this money for shipping, we almost can't earn it!
In the past, who was the most cattle in shipping, what Singapore ship king, Hong Kong ship king, that one by one shocked the world.
The Chinese ship king came out of Ningbo, when Hong Kong's two males competed for hegemony, Bao Yugang and Dong Haoyun, one was a Ningbo person and the other was a Zhoushan person, who went to Hong Kong to work hard, all of them set their sights on shipping, and in the process of becoming bigger and stronger, they competed for the status of "ship king".
(There are more than 500 ports in the two cities)
In 1955, Dong Haoyun made a large profit by taking advantage of the Korean War and became famous in the industry. In 1956, the Middle East War broke out and the Suez Canal was blocked, and shipping had to take the Cape of Good Hope. Then the Vietnam War also broke out, and the US military urgently needed logistics supply ships, so it sold half and gave 12 ships to Dong Haoyun, making him responsible for pulling goods for the US army. Just as Japan is promoting the shipbuilding industry with low-interest loans, Dong Haoyun took advantage of the situation to order a 16,000-ton "Oriental Cherry Blossom", which was unique for a while.
Compared with him, Bao Yugang's model earns less. Originally, Bao Yugang's ship was less than Dong's, the tonnage was still small, most of them were very old, bought cheaply, he simply took the charter mode, regardless of the cargo, just in this war period, the price of chartering ships rose, Bao Yugang's ship leased to the freight company made a lot of money, and quickly added 7 new ships.
Although Bao Yugang's model was ridiculed by Dong Haoyun, "What kind of shipowner is that?" But unable to cover this model of light assets, fast turnover, strong financial attributes, Bao Yugang also pulled hsbc, and also joined the hsbc board in 1971." There was capital this big tree to cool off, and later Bao Yugang's ship bought more and more, and the tonnage gradually caught up with Dong Haoyun.
It happened that in the year of OOCL's listing, the US "Newsweek" called Bao Yugang "Oriental Onassis" (world-class ship king), as a predecessor, Dong Haoyun was a bit hanging. Then, in 1977, a Western shipping brokerage company ranked the ship kings, with Bao Yugang as the first and Dong Haoyun as the seventh.
Dong Haoyun simply wrote to these media, saying that it is not calculated like this, my ship is surnamed Dong, and half of Bao Yugang's ship is owned by HSBC.
Moreover, Dong Haoyun especially likes to buy a big boat, launch a new boat, make a big news, once Dong Haoyun in order to win a female pianist, he specially chartered the Royal Yalba Concert Hall in London, and also invited the British Royal Orchestra to accompany, the plane ticket to each guest friend to ensure that they are present.
03
Just when the two were fighting for the position of "Ship King", the external environment changed.
Shipping during the war was popular, new ships were built more, by the seventies there was no war, business was much less, the Middle East also lost its temper, triggered a global oil crisis, and shipping entered a downward cycle.
Bao Yugang entered the bank at the age of thirteen or fourteen, worked for seven years, climbed to the position of deputy general manager of the Bank of Shanghai at the age of 20, and then resigned from his family to start a business in Hong Kong. He quickly made a judgment that the shipping decline cycle came, the duration was not good, but it could be long or short, and then decided, one to reduce the leverage, quickly sell the ship to pay off the debt, and the second transformation to do other industries, such as real estate.
He gradually set his sights on Wharf, a property company affiliated with Jardine Matheson & Co. Wharf is Hong Kong's largest cargo port, equipped with deep-water terminals, open-air freight yards, freight warehouses, as well as hotels, buildings, trams and other industries.
At that time, Li Ka-shing also stared at the Wharf and bought 20 million shares, but his goal was too big, and he was immediately stopped by Jardine Matheson & Co., and Li Ka-shing found Bao Yugang.
Thus, there was a classic scene in the business world, Bao Yugang ate all of Li Ka-shing's shares in one go, plus his previous shares, won 30% in one fell swoop, and joined the board of directors of Wharf. Subsequently, Bao Yugang squeezed out Jardine Matheson & Co. through various means, and finally became the big boss of Wharf.
In this way, Bao Yugang successfully landed, transformed from a ship king into a real estate tycoon, and together with Li Ka-shing, in the following decades, sat on the fast track of the ultra-high-speed development of Hong Kong real estate, and even caught up with the golden period of real estate development in the mainland, Wharf has projects in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Foshan, Chengdu, Chongqing, Changsha and other cities, earning a lot of money.
(Source: Chengdu International Finance Center official website)
As soon as Bao Yugang left, no one competed with Dong Haoyun for the position of ship king. Just when the shipping cycle reached the trough stage, Dong Haoyun felt that it was time to copy the bottom of the stud, eat the first, sit and wait for the recovery, so a variety of takeovers, discounts to buy a lot of ships, and even Japan's giant ship "Sea Giant".
This ship, which was ordered by the Greek shipping tycoon to be manufactured by the Japanese Sumitomo Heavy Industries Group, is the world's largest transport ship, with a design load of 440,000 tons, coincidentally, by the time of delivery, the Greek tycoon went bankrupt. Sumitomo sold it to Dong Haoyun at a discount, and Dong Haoyun was not big enough, so that the Japanese Kouzu Shipyard split the Jumbo in half and widened it, and finally increased the load by 146,000 tons, breaking multiple world records.
How big is the ship? Not to mention the Panama Canal, the Suez Canal, and even the English Channel and the Strait of Malacca can't be crossed.
As a result, as soon as the ship was launched, the oil crisis came, and the "sea giant" transported two oil trips, then leased it to Mexico as an oil storage ship, and sometimes ran the route from Japan to the Persian Gulf.
Not long after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, you were beaten to death, and even began to attack the ships carrying oil at sea, and finally, in 1988, an Iraqi flying fish anti-ship missile blasted the "sea giant" into a 90-square-meter hole, and the ship sank.
Fortunately, at this time, Dong Haoyun had passed away, and he did not see this scene, otherwise he would be more angry.
In 1982, Dong Haoyun died suddenly, leaving 20 billion yuan of debt to his children. The 20 billion yuan in that era was an astronomical number, and the creditors also fell into a tangled situation: they wanted money very much, but if the Dong family went bankrupt, there would be nothing, and if they could turn over and come back to life, the debt would still be saved, so there was no hurry.
In the end, it was Fok Ying-tung and Li Ka-shing who helped each other, injecting $120 million into OOCL, which was left behind by Dong Haoyun, and finally turned a profit in 1992, and shipping gradually recovered.
In 2018, OOCL was finally acquired by China Sino-Ocean, and the Dong family has since withdrawn from the stage.
04
This century of shipping has become the stage for Chinese shipowners.
In recent decades, China's shipbuilding industry has also experienced several development cycles:
In the 1970s and 1980s, China's shipbuilding output accounted for less than 1% of the world's share, ranking 17th. However, after the reform and opening up, commodities need to go to sea, and the state began to vigorously support the shipbuilding industry.
In 2000, China's shipbuilding output accounted for 5% of the world's shipbuilding output share from 0.8% in 1982, and more than 90% of imported oil needed to be shipped from sea, and most of it was carried by foreign ships.
At this time, some people put forward the concept of "energy security", hoping to build their own ships as soon as possible to replace foreign ships, and the competent department of China's shipbuilding industry, the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, set a goal:
After 10 to 15 years of development, the comprehensive competitiveness of China's shipbuilding industry is close to the level of Japan and South Korea at that time.
In terms of total shipbuilding, by 2005, ship production will reach 10 million deadweight tons, accounting for about 16% of the world market share; By 2015, it will reach 24 million dwt, accounting for 35% of the world market share, reaching the world's first in terms of tonnage and becoming the world's largest shipbuilding country.
This has set off a wave of shipbuilding fever.
On June 3, 2005, Jiangnan Changxing Shipbuilding Base officially started construction, with a planned annual shipbuilding capacity of 12 million tons, which was the largest shipbuilding base in China at that time.
In the Bohai Rim Bay, Liaoning Province and China Shipbuilding Industry Group have carried out cross-regional cooperation, and dalian alone plans to form a shipbuilding capacity of 4 million tons.
Jiangsu, Fujian, Shandong and other provinces have also introduced shipbuilding development investment strategies.
Even some fishing villages in Jiangsu and Zhejiang have become shipbuilding bases. In Taizhou, Zhejiang alone, more than 200 shipbuilding companies have emerged...
In 2006, China surpassed Japan in 2006 and caught up with South Korea in 2007.
However, the financial crisis of 2008 brought about a cold winter of maritime transport, which also affected shipbuilding. At the end of 2008, the global bulk carrier (China's shipbuilding orders are mainly bulk carriers) directly zero transactions, and the blow to China's shipbuilding industry was greater. Shipbuilding orders fell to less than half of what they did in 2007 that year, widening the gap with South Korea to 6.1 percent.
Under the crisis, the goal of boosting domestic demand was first planned in 2009, so that the shipbuilding industry actively developed special ships such as distant-water fishing vessels, special ships, engineering vessels, and work vessels, and orders have recovered to a certain extent. By 2013, the government had started another shipbreaking subsidy to encourage the construction of new ships and retire old ships, a policy that was supposed to end in 2015 and extended for two years until 2017.
At the same time, after the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed, China participated in the construction and acquisition of many overseas ports, from the Gwadar port in Pakistan to the port of Piraeus in Greece, the port of Colombo in Sri Lanka, etc., which has promoted the development of the shipping industry.
(Photo source: "The Spatial Evolution and Mechanism of China's Overseas Port Investment Pattern")
In this way, China's shipbuilding and shipping survived the most difficult 10 years to have the confidence to acquire OOCL and catch up with the "super shipping cycle" after the epidemic.
So far, the number of Chinese shipowners has reached 10,603, accounting for 15% of the world's total capacity, surpassing the long-standing Greece is just around the corner:
(Image source: Clarkson Research)
Moreover, with the help of shipbreaking subsidies, the overall fleet of Chinese shipowners is relatively young, with an average age of 10.2 years, which is lower than the level of the global fleet of 12 years, and the ship is in better condition.
Last month, there were two more big events in China's shipping industry:
First, the opening of the new port in Haifa, Israel, invested and jointly built by SIPG Group, became the first new terminal in Israel in 60 years, with an annual design throughput of 1.06 million TEUs.
(Source: SIPG Group)
Another thing is the launch of the first unmanned container ship "Zhifei" into the sea trial.
This ship is built by Qingdao Shipyard, with three driving modes of manual driving, remote remote control driving and unmanned autonomous navigation, which can realize the functions of intelligent perception and cognition of the navigation environment, independent planning of routes, intelligent collision avoidance, automatic berthing and remote remote control driving.
(Image source: Video clip of Volkswagen Newspaper)
In science fiction movies, trucks driving themselves on the streets and autonomous boats on the sea may soon be realized.
One of the silent leaders is China,000, the world's factory.