Land in sight! The shipping company Pacific International Lines (PIL) has developed a navigation plan that will allow it to enter key markets for its container shipping business in Latin America.
A year ago, the company opened its own offices in Brazil, Mexico – the two largest economies in the region -, Peru and Guatemala, a strategic change of direction that has been taken by senior management after a financial crisis that led to an internal restructuring prior to the pandemic, in which it received a capital injection from Heliconia Capital , of the Temasek Group , owned by the Singapore government, who took a majority stake in the company and the rest was distributed among the family that founded the business in 1967.
As the financial crisis period has emerged, largely due to the profits achieved during the health crisis, the shipping business has been going from strength to strength. CEO Lars Kastrup, a seasoned shipping industry executive, delivered financial results last year with significant positive margins for the company .
This boom for PIL has given it the confidence to plan the opening of new offices and grow its business in the Latin American market, where China plays an active role in imports from most countries in the region. In Mexico alone, last year, the Asian giant reached a 22% share of non-oil imports, according to data from the Bank of Mexico.
Andrés Poveda, PIL’s general manager in Mexico, commented in an interview with T21 that the shipping company’s presence in the country dates back 13 years, through its shipping agent, Maritimex . However, the navigation plan includes resuming documentation , commercial relations, customer service, intermodal services, transit services to customs within the country , among others.
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