The equal merger with Navix Line and the name Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (1998)

Gaining scale without building ships

President Ikuta said that increasing ships becomes a factor that disturbs the market, and bought scale in companies rather than in vessels. A 40% stake in Gearbulk, the acquisition of Tokyo Marine, the purchase of an LNG shipping company from Burmah of Britain, and then the merger with Navix Line. In an industry where adding your own tonnage means breaking your own freight rates, taking over another owner’s fleet avoids increasing the total. The fact that he had approached President Hori half a year before the NYK–Showa Line announcement appears to support this reading.

Even after the reshuffle, however, liner shipping still made up 40% of the business, and the losses that sat there remained. In 2002 container freight rates stuck at historic lows, and as executive officer Kato put it, the more you loaded the more you lost — diluting the proportion did not change the economics of the business itself. The corporate name was changed to Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, resolving the naming problem left by the 1964 merger; but the liner cargo that the same merger had taken on was carried forward until the three Japanese lines carved the container business out in 2016.