News / PACC Container Line quits liner business after parent group refocuses

Credit Martina Li

PACC Container Line, a South-east Asia-focused feeder operator, has quit the liner trades after its parent, Malaysian conglomerate Kuok Group, restructured its shipping business.

While the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority of Singapore shows PACC Container remains registered, a spokesperson for Pacific Carriers, which represents the Kuok group’s shipping business, told The Loadstar the company decided to stop shipping containers, even after freight rates began shooting towards historical highs last year.

The spokesperson said: “In 2020, Pacific Carriers underwent a fleet renewal and consolidation of its dry bulk, breakbulk, projects and parcel businesses as part of the group’s wider strategic review.

“We have ceased the feeder services and exited the container shipping sector to focus on our dry bulk, breakbulk, tanker and gas business portfolio.”

VesselsValue data shows that PACC Container sold its last containership, the 526 teu PAC Cergas, to Indonesia’s Meratus Line in April.

PACC was established in 1983 to provide regional breakbulk and container services for PCL in South-east Asia and its fleet peaked between 2001 and 2003, when it took delivery of four 1,100 teu newbuildings, which were primarily chartered-out to other intra-Asia container operators, and subsequently sold. PACC  deployed three vessels to carry containers from Malaysia’s Pasir Gudang port and Indonesia’s Pontianak port to be transhipped from Singapore to Europe, the US and Australasia.

Kuok Group founder Robert Kuok is Malaysia’s richest man, with a net worth of approximately $18bn.