Yang Ming Halts Container Service to Iran
Taiwan’s troubled Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp is halting its container service to Iran, becoming the first foreign shipping line to abandon the route a year after international sanctions on Tehran were lifted, Reuters reported.
Yang Ming announced in a regulatory filing it had suspended its share trading until May 4 in an effort to reduce losses from a global downturn in shipping.
Yang Ming, the world’s ninth largest container shipping line, is a comparatively small player in Iran, calling there just once a week. Several larger shipping lines have begun serving Iran since sanctions were lifted a year ago.
An executive with Keelung-headquartered Yang Ming said the firm had “ceased direct services to Iran on concerns of rising tensions there”.
“We took into consideration the recent sanctions against Iran as well as the current geopolitical tensions in the region and what’s been going on between Iran, the U.S. and Europe,” the executive said, declining to elaborate further.
Reuters was unable to confirm independently whether the cancellation of the route was due to new concern over Iran, or to changes at the Taiwanese company which is trying to slash costs after it posted a loss of $62 million in the last quarter of 2016.
