Joseph Bonney | Aug 12, 2011 11:04AM EDT
Hanjin Shipping's container division lost $159 million in the second quarter, as rising fuel prices and a steep decline in east-west rates offset a 13.2 percent increase in volume.
The South Korean company’s report parallels losses seen by a growing array of carriers.
Hanjin’s loss reversed an operating profit of $136 million in the second quarter of 2010. Container revenue fell 1.2 percent to $1.8 billion, primarily because of “delayed recovery in freight rates on the trans-Pacific and Asia-Europe trades,” the company said.
Hanjin posted a group-wide net loss of $254 million, reversing a $191 million net profit a year earlier. Group revenue fell 1.5 percent to $2.2 billion.
The company’s bulk carrier operations were hit by weak rates that kept revenue flat at $368 million despite a 17.1 percent rise in volume.
Container volume during the second quarter totaled 1,079,914 twenty-foot-equivalent units, compared with 954,917 a year earlier. Volume was up in all of Hanjin’s main services except the eastbound trans-Pacific, which plunged 14.5 percent to 268,491 TEUs.
Average revenue per container fell 15.7 percent, primarily because of a 30.8 percent plunge in rates to and from Europe.
-- Contact Joseph Bonney at jbonney@joc.com. Follow him on Twitter @josephbonney.