Australian National Line Review

ANL Review
Official Website
http://www.anl.com.au/
Company Address
30 Convention Centre Place
South Wharf Vic. 3006 Level 11

Australian National Line (ANL) is a global shipping company based in Melbourne, Australia. The company is one of the largest international shipping companies in the world. It employs over 17,500 people and operates 650 agent locations and offices in countries around the world. The company owns over 400 vessels and offers services to around 420 ports in 150 countries. In 2011, the company shipped over 10 million, twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) containers and generated $14.9 million in revenues.

Early History

Australian National Line was established in 1956 by the Australian government. It was originally set up to transport goods around the Australian coast. Over the next several decades, the company rapidly added new routes and services, and established itself as one of Australia’s biggest shipping companies. In 1998, Marseille, France-based container shipping giant CMA CGM formally acquired the Australian shipping company for an undisclosed sum.

Fully-Owned Subsidiary

Australian National Line currently operates as a fully owned subsidiary of CMA CGA, which, these days, is ranked as the third-largest container shipping company in the world. Despite its name, the company is no longer an Australian-owned company. Only its agency operations, which employs about 300 people, is based in Australia, according to an ANL review by Flotilla Australia.

Cargo Shipping Services

As might be expected of a company its size, ANL transports virtually every conceivable type of cargo, ranging from automobiles and household goods, to break bulk cargo, grain, hazardous goods, bulk liquids, heavy equipment and project cargo. Between 1998 and 2011, the company expanded its shipping capacity from 70,000 TEU to 1.06 million TEU. The company prides itself on offering cargo transportation services from any location in the world to any destination. Though it used to own several Roll on Roll off (RoRo) vessels for shipping cars in the past, the shipper is focused almost exclusively on container shipping now.

US Services

ANL operates a fairly limited direct service between Australia and the United States. The company uses a fleet of six ships to transport goods between Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland in New Zealand to the ports of Los Angeles and Oakland in California. The company also operates a route between Australia, Suva, Honolulu and Oakland. ANL’s advertised transit time between Melbourne and Oakland is 24 days and 26 days between Melbourne and Los Angeles.

Customers from the United States looking for an Australian National Line review may hav difficult finding one – the company is not currently listed with the Better Business Bureau.