Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha is a Kobe, Japan-based conglomerate offering a wide range of shipping and transportation logistics services large water slides for sale. The company was established in 1919, and, currently, maintains offices or agents in more than 35 countries around the world. Kawasaki is a publicly traded company on the Tokyo stock exchange and reported revenues of nearly $7 billion in 2012.
Shipping Pioneer
K Line prides itself on being a pioneer in several areas of the shipping industry. Over the decades that the company has been in business, it has developed a range of different vessels types and shipping services designed to meet the unique needs of customers in different parts of the world. In 1970, the company manufactured the first Pure Car Carrier (PCC) in Japan. About 12 years later, it released Japan’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier, and, a few years later, became the first Japanese firm to introduce a double stack train (DST) service in the U.S. for transporting containers.
Massive Global Fleet
Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha currently uses a huge fleet of 80 container ships, over 150 dry bulk carriers, 45 LNG carriers and about 20 oil tankers to transport a staggering range of goods around the world. The shipping giant also owns or leases a wide range of pure car carriers and hybrid vessels for transporting cars and other wheeled cargo to destinations in every continent. The company’s container ship services are based out of major four hubs in North America, Asia, Japan and Europe.
Car and Dry Bulk transportation
Kawaski’s car transportation business is a relatively smaller, but fast growing, operation. The company currently offers regular bi-monthly services from the east and west coasts of the United States to Europe and Asia. In recent years, the shipper has also been rapidly expanding its intra-Asia service network to address growing demand for car transportation services within Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, as part of its dry bulk carrier operations, K Line helps customers transport raw materials such as wheat, corn, soybeans, iron ore, pulp and coal. The company’s major dry bulk service routes are China and India, though it offers services to various other regions as well.
New Megaships on Order
According to a Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha review in the Journal of Commerce, the company is currently in the process of adding several new megaships to its already massive fleet of vessels. The new ships include five containerships that will each be capable of carrying as many as 13,870 twenty-foot containers (TEU) per trip. The ships are being built by Japan’s Imabari Shipbuilding Co., and will be nearly half a kilometer long according to the K Line review.