Recently, with the smooth completion of the third batch of shipping tasks, COSCO Shipping Lines’ Chery complete vehicle Taicang Port container export project delivered an impressive report card, with a cumulative total of 13,052 vehicles shipped across three batches, setting a new all-time high for complete vehicle transportation business in East China.
As brand-new Chery vehicles are steadily loaded into containers and board COSCO Shipping Specialized Carriers’ multipurpose vessels bound for the European continent, this is not merely a cross-ocean journey of cargo, but a logistics innovation practice that breaks convention.
Currently, China’s automobile exports are experiencing explosive growth. Industry forecasts show that by 2026, China’s automobile exports are expected to exceed 10 million vehicles, yet the growth of global car carrier fleet capacity is far from keeping pace with export growth.
Facing this dilemma, COSCO Shipping has chosen an innovative path—loading vehicles “into containers” and leveraging the vast networks of multipurpose vessels and container ships to open new overseas channels for automakers. This is not a simple substitution, but a deep integration of the container shipping route network and port resources with multipurpose vessel capacity, achieving a synergistic effect of “1+1>2”.
This export task featured tight deadlines, long chains, and great coordination difficulty.
Vehicles had to be assembled from various locations to Taicang Port, containerized, then delivered to the port and loaded onto vessels, ultimately arriving in Europe—every link allowed no margin for error.
COSCO Shipping Lines’ Shanghai subsidiary quickly formed a joint working group, covering container supply allocation, space guarantee, and coordinating terminals, trucking fleets, vessel operators, and manufacturers, opening up the entire chain of vehicle assembly, containerization, port delivery, and vessel loading.
Synchronized collaboration across multiple departments, coupled with multiple contingency plans, ensured uninterrupted operations during the task period and successfully opened an efficient new transport channel directly to Italy’s Vado Ligure Port.
From the first batch of 4,275 vehicles to the third batch of 4,454 vehicles, the rising cargo volume behind it is the most direct recognition from customers of COSCO Shipping’s service capabilities.
During the peak automobile export season with tight capacity, what customers care most about is not the name of the transport method, but “Can it be shipped on time?” “Can costs be controlled?” “Is the whole process reliable?” COSCO Shipping has seized on these three core demands, from initial solution design to the actual execution of each voyage, precisely matching customers’ time windows and cost requirements.
Over the past year or more, COSCO Shipping has provided containerized complete vehicle export services for multiple brand automakers, covering major markets including Europe, the Mediterranean, and Latin America, forming a mature solution that can be replicated and promoted.
From case-by-case operations of “one vessel, one discussion” to today’s standardized batch shipping, from a single shipping segment to door-to-door full-process service, COSCO Shipping has turned automakers’ “demand lists” for going global into “capability lists.”
With a massive capacity base as support, coupled with continuous refinement of full-chain service capabilities, COSCO Shipping is advancing complete vehicle container exports from “feasible” to “reliable,” and from “able to ship” to “shipping smoothly.”
Looking to the future, COSCO Shipping will further break down barriers, collaborate deeply with upstream and downstream partners, and build a supply chain ecosystem; at the same time, it will place safety and resilience as the core foundation, safeguarding domestic automobile brands as they set sail for global markets.
