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Photo: Mojuan Chen
By Alison Koo
The China Merchants group might be aiming to link its sea freight business with affiliate Antong Holdings’ intermodal transport operations.
Its shipping subsidiary, China Merchants Energy Shipping (CMES), whose core business is dry bulk and oil shipping, now controls 12.22% of Antong, which owns coastal line Quanzhou Ansheng Shipping and forwarder Quanzhou Antong Logistics.
CMES and Antong are listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, whose regulations state that a mandatory takeover bid is triggered when an investor acquires 30% or more of a listed company. Share purchases began last July after a failed takeover attempt of Antong two months earlier.
China Merchants entered the container segment in 2021, when Sinotrans Container Lines (SCL) became a CMES subsidiary, four years after the China Merchants and Sinotrans groups, merged. The Chinese government, which owns both, wanted to streamline several state-owned enterprises.
Antong is engaged in container multimodal movements, with core assets in land transport, especially rail stations and inland networks. SCL, on the other hand, specialises in sea freight and international routes. Combining the two would fill the last gap in “door-to-door” logistics.
In 2024, CMES initiated a major restructuring to acquire control of Antong, aiming to merge their container and ro-ro shipping assets, notably SCL and Guangzhou Ro-Ro – a transaction intended to strengthen their market position with a combined box ship fleet of 130,000 teu – but the bid was terminated in May 2025, due to market changes.
In 2020, Antong, founded by the Guo family, came under state control after financial mismanagement resulted in a state-sponsored bail-out involving China Merchants.
Regarded as China’s second-largest coastal container carrier behind Zhonggu Logistics, Antong-owned Quanzhou Ansheng has 38 ships, for 54,876 teu, of its own and another 34 (18,570 teu) on charter. Sinolines owns 19 ships, 30,796 teu, and has 25 chartered (40,346 teu).
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