MOL to Expand Group-wide Logistics Services

TOKYO - Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL; President: Koichi Muto) today announced plans to further expand its group-wide logistics services to meet a range of customer needs.

Customers around the world count on MOL Group logistics services, which draw on group companies' unique functions and capabilities. It has enhanced networks in Japan and overseas. In recent years, particularly in the Mekong region, the group has aggressively developed its networks, and providing a wide variety of competitive service options in Thailand and Vietnam.

Currently the group companies are working in complete solidarity with others under the leadership of MOL by further sharing information, knowledge, technologies, and experience that each company has accumulated. It is driving forward to strengthen collaboration and synergy, focusing on the following three key issues, for example:

• winning more plant project business,
• kaizen (small changes for the better) in trucking and warehousing operations, and
• aggressively expanding business in Southeast Asia.

Through networks spreading all over the world and effective use of each company's distinctive services, some of them have already secured new cargo transport contracts through collaboration. The effects of cost reduction are beginning to pay off as well.

MOL has confidence in the future growth of the logistics business and positions it as a business domain that will yield stable profits. The MOL Group is taking a more proactive stance in increasing investment, expanding investment businesses, and enhancing services, while building upon the advantages of its group companies.

MOL Group's distinctive logistics services are as follows:

MOL Logistics (Japan) Co., Ltd. (MLG) has global networks in 22 nations around the world, expanding forwarding services. In 2013, it opened new subsidiaries in Cambodia and Indonesia, which are positioned for strong economic growth. In Mexico, it opened the Irapuato Branch in the Bajio Region on the Mexican Plateau in Central Mexico, where more companies are establishing a presence, particularly automakers and manufactures of automotive parts and components. MLG supports supply chains of customers all over the world by offering logistics services such as tailor-made cross border transport and offshore logistics, and international and domestic removal services, in addition to consolidated logistics, which combine air, ocean, and land transport with contract logistics of warehousing, non-resident inventory, and distribution processing services.

MOL Consolidation Service Ltd. (MCS) has steadily grown through its buyer's consolidation service. MCS expects its container trade to reach 180,000 TEUs in 2013. It offers real-time cargo information customized for every customer, using its proprietary Starlink system, ensuring stable and efficient high-quality services at every step of the supply chain, starting with the initial product order. This reduces customers' logistics costs and boosts transport efficiency.

(*) Transport service that involves consolidating products manufactured in multiple plants in Asia and purchased by retailers, in containers at loading ports. Consolidating various small-lot cargoes destination by destination greatly reduces transport costs compared to transporting individual items.

Utoc Corporation has a 123-year history as a total logistics operator, with businesses centering on harbor and port transit, logistics, and plant transport. In Japan, it operates 14 warehouses with more than 120,000m² of total floor space, and about 200 vehicles mainly used for container transport. It also has a lineup of special-purpose vehicles for plant transport. Utoc holds a key advantage in heavyweight cargo transport. When transporting a heavyweight cargo such as plant equipment, Utoc can provide directly managed integrated service, which encompasses transport from the plant, land transport, barge transport, loading on a vessel, land transport at the unloading port, and assembly and retrofitting of facilities and equipment.

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (Thailand) Co., Ltd. provides not only agency services for ocean transport, but also import/export customs clearance, land transport, warehousing, and container depot operation. It has offered a wide range of logistics services in Thailand since its founding more than 40 years ago. Its land transport division has over 300 vehicles, offering a wide variety of transport services such as transport of ocean containers, steel, chemical products, and liquid cargo. Its warehouse division opened a 6,500m²-large warehouse in Laem Chabang in June 2013, and, a, 8,000m² warehouse is under construction in the Bangna Trad area. With those warehouses, the total floor space of MOL Group-owned warehouses in Thailand will exceed 90,000m². MOL is aggressively expanding its logistics services while collaborating with MLG, Utoc, and other group companies.