South Korea’s second largest carrier, Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM), has been said to be interested in buying Hanjin Shipping’s container vessels.
After facing financial problems, Hanjin filed for bankruptcy in August. HMM will be the first carrier to be interested in the vessels. However, as HMM has a debt of 4.54 billion dollars, it is uncertain whether it will be able to purchase the vessels. It is believed that the South Korean government and Korean Development Bank will support HMM, if it decides to buy the vessels.
The current problems with Hanjin also affected shippers as containers were stranded aboard the Hanjin fleet across the world. At the beginning of this month TLN/FENEX, EVO and Fenedex won their preliminary proceedings on the high lump sum tariff ECT requested for the release of containers from Hanjin.