Launch of Asia/U.S. East Coast/Mediterranean Service

COSCO Container Lines, Ltd., Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Ltd., and Yang Ming Marine Transport Corporation are pleased to announce that, in order to better meet customers' needs and improve operating efficiency, the three lines are to combine two of their presently jointly-operated container liner services, Asia/U.S. East Coast service and U.S. East Coast/Mediterranean service, into one pendulum service--Asia/U.S. East Coast/Mediterranean Service-(called as "AUM").
AUM will be operated by twelve 3400-TEU faster full container vessels. Rotation of the pendulum service is:

Tokyo (Wed-Wed) / Qingdao (Sat/Sat) / Shanghai (Sun-Tue) / Yantian (Wed-Thu) /
Hong Kong (Thu-Fri) / Panama (transit) / Charleston (Fri-Sat) / Norfolk (Sun-Mon) /
New York (Tue-Wed) / Boston (Thu-Fri) / Valencia (Fri-Sat) / Naples (Sun-Tue) /
Genoa (Wed-Fri) / Barcelona (Fri-Sat) / New York (Sat-Mon) / Norfolk (Tue-Tue) /
Charleston (Wed-Thu) / Panama (transit) / Tokyo (Wed-)

AUM will provide most competitive service on Asia/U.S. East Coast and U.S East Coast/Mediterranean trade lanes. It will be the only service on Asia/U.S East Coast trade lane that has direct call at Boston, MA, which will definitely boost the trade between Asia and Northeast United States.
The pendulum service is scheduled to commence from MV ZHENHE v.0101E whose estimated departure from Shanghai is on February 19, 2002 Subject to approval of appropriate authorities.