April 17, 2008 - Tokyo, Japan - CKYH (COSCON, "K" Line, Yang Ming, and Hanjin Shipping) Alliance announced that they held the 2008 Summit Meeting on April 9th, 2008 in Okinawa, Japan. The Summit Meeting was attended by the senior management staff of each line.
The alliance stated that the major goal of the 2008 CKYH Summit Meeting was to strengthen the cooperation among the alliance partners in order to enhance service competitiveness and improve services to customers on the East and West trades, and also to enlarge service coverage.
In order to overcome the current challenges in the shipping industry, such as the unprecedented escalation of bunker and operation costs, the CKYH Alliance partners agreed to proceed with various strategies; rationalization of services in the Trans-Pacific and European trades, development of regional feeder networks, cooperation on terminals and chassis, etc.
Furthermore, in recognition of the importance of global environment, the CKYH Alliance also agreed to make efforts to protect the environment by reducing bunker consumption through service rationalization, minimizing emission of CO2 through vessel speed control and by using environmentally-friendly equipment for both vessel and terminal operations.