COSCO PACIFIC REPORTS FLAT HALF-YEAR PROFITS

   COSCO Pacific Ltd., the container leasing and port operating arm of the China Ocean Shipping Co. group, reported flat net profits and revenues for the first half of the year.
    Profit attributable to shareholders for COSCO Pacific, one of the COSCO companies listed on the stock exchange, was up 0.1 percent, to $67 million. Revenue decreased by 0.6 percent, to $108 million.
    COSCO Pacific said that the utilization rate of its leased container fleet was 96 percent, well above the industry average of approximately 80 percent. COSCO Container Lines continues to lease over 70 percent of COSCO Pacific’s containers.
    The container terminals operated by COSCO Pacific or in which it has partial ownership reported a 27 percent jump in throughput for the first six months of the year, to 2,677,457 TEUs. Traffic at the COSCO-HIT terminal in Hong Kong was down 1 percent. Box volumes at the Yantian terminal in South China was up 64 percent.