According to the 2022 service guidelines of Ocean Shipping Alliance (COSCO's Ship Sharing Partnership), COSCO Shipping has increased its capacity as one of its Asia-US Gulf Coast services by upgrading Panamax ships to replace Panamax ships that once served the west coast of the United States.
According to data from Sea-web, a sister product of Business Magazine, after departing from Shanghai on January 2, as of Wednesday, the 8,500 TEU COSCO Philippine ship was docked in the Gulf of Mexico and was currently destined for the Port of Houston. The Philippine COSCO has called at the Port of Los Angeles twice before, and sent a request to the Port of Los Angeles once in September 2022 and once in December 2022.
COSCO seems to have been testing the demand for large ships because the other three post-Panamax ships currently deployed to the Gulf of Mexico Express temporarily docked on the Gulf Coast between June and January 2023. In addition to COSCO Shipping, its OOCL subsidiary also redeployed three post-Panamanian ships to the same US Gulf route for the first time. The guide previously listed ships deployed in the Orient Overseas Seremban Express service from China to Long Beach.
, as a super large state-owned enterprise directly managed by the central government, COSCO Shipping Group takes shipping, ports, logistics, etc. as the foundation and core industries, and uses shipping finance, equipment manufacturing, value-added services, and digital innovation as enabling and value-added industries to build a global Comprehensive logistics supply chain service ecology, of which industrial finance plays an important role.
It is understood that in 2016, China Ocean Shipping Group was reorganized and established by China Ocean Shipping Corporation and China Shipping Corporation.
At present, information shows that it has 57 global investment terminals and 50 container terminals. The annual throughput capacity of container terminals is 0.132 billion TEU, forming a relatively complete upstream and downstream industrial structure system such as shipping, terminals, logistics, shipping finance, and shipbuilding.
Broaden Project in Mobile Houston
Gulf Coast ports are expanding their capacity to handle large ships as new distribution and warehouse capacity continues to move out of the West Coast. The Port of Houston said in a statement this week that it has completed plans to widen the first 11-mile section of the Houston ship's waterway, which would allow post-Panamanian vessels to better bypass the port's tanker and bulk carrier traffic.
Roger Guenther, executive director of, also said that "it brings the Port of Houston closer to handling unrestricted two-way traffic for large ships for the benefit of all stakeholders." The project will also deepen parts of the Houston Channel and is expected to be completed by 2025.
Forwardernet.com