CATOS to sweep Japanese market

Domestic port solution provider, Total Soft Bank, is looking to further penetrate and consolidate the Japanese port operation market.

Total Soft Bank (TSB), a port logistic software provider headquartered in Pusan, is gaining in the Japanese market with its premiere technology, CATOS, while many other foreign companies have failed to penetrate the market, mostly due to the Japanese aversion to adopting foreign systems.

CATOS (Computer Automated Terminal Operation System), independently developed by TSB, is now handling over 10% of global container cargo volumes in 42 domestic and overseas container terminals. Especially, since the Yokohama Port College and Kobe Port College adopted the CATOS program in its regular curriculum in 1998, TSB succeeded in providing systems to one terminal in Kobe in 1998 and four terminals in Osaka in 1999 after its first provision to KCT Kawasaki in 1997.

While it signed contracts with DC-3, a Japanese container terminal operator and KNCT last year, it is expecting to provide the system to a few more terminals including the Kobe New Port this year.

TSB earned KRW 2.7 billion from Japan last year, a third of its total sales of KRW 9.1 billion. It is planning to bring in KRW 4 billion from Japanese clients and is expecting whole sales to total 18 billion this year.

On top of it, it received an order worth USD 1.2 million from the Yangming container terminal in Kaohisung, Taiwan last August and began setting up the system early this month. The Kwangyang Container Terminal Corporation, a joint venture company formed by HIT(HongKong International Terminal), Hanjin Shipping, and Hyundai Merchant Marine, also contracted last November to introduce CATOS in its terminal for 1 billion won.