All Hanjin Shipping chartered vessels that have completed unloading their cargo have been told to cancel their charter agreements and return the ships to the shipowners, a South Korean judge said on Monday.
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Of the 97 container ships operated by the financially shaky shipper, 28 have unloaded goods.
Liquidation remained the most likely outcome for Hanjin Shipping, the newspaper cited the sources as saying.
The company is working on various scenarios and focusing on one under which Hanjin would retain up to 15 of its 37 ships and return nearly all of its 61 chartered ships to their owners, leaving a much smaller carrier, the Wall Street Journal said. The collapse of the firm will probably spark fresh consolidation among container lines as they attempt to ride out shock waves faced by the industry, Germany’s No. 1 carrier Hapag-Lloyd AG said last week.
Korean Air, the largest shareholder of the cash-strapped Hanjin Shipping, was unable to decide on September 18 on ways to fund the nation’s leading container shipping line. Korean Air’s board was not able to reach a conclusion on how to provide 60 billion won worth of funds sooner at the meeting on Sunday as some directors opposed to the plan of providing funds to a company that has already entered court receivership.
The bankruptcy filing by the Korean company, which controlled 2.9 percent share of the global container ship traffic, threw supply chains in turmoil during peak season when retailers look to store warehouses and shelves to prepare for the year’s biggest holiday sales – Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The bankrupt shipper said Sunday that the cargo ship Geneva offloaded its containers in Japan and headed to Busan. Next week at least three more Hanjin ships are expected to follow suit at other ports around the world. Tens of Hanjin Shipping’s vessels and cargoes are still stranded at sea.
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