Factories shift out of China to avoid trade war, boosting volume for logistics firms like Kerry
Kerry Logistics Network, owned by Malaysian billionaire Robert Kuok, has benefited from trade war shake-ups at Asian firms
Kerry Logistics Network, a Hong Kong-listed firm owned by Robert Kuok, Malaysia’s wealthiest man, has become a beneficiary of the ongoing trade war between the world’s two largest economies, as customers shift part of their production lines from mainland China to such destinations as northern Malaysia’s Penang to skirt US tariffs.
“Our clients have been shifting part of their production lines as early as March from China to other Asian countries where they already have manufacturing plants,” said the logistics company’s managing director, William Ma Wing-kai.
The Sino-US trade war has been forcing Kerry’s clients to shift their production towards the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), or to ship finished goods to the Americas to avoid the increased tariffs. Either way would increase shipping volumes, Ma said.
“This is a reallocation of global production bases,” Ma said during an interview with the South China Morning Post.
Kerry, one of Asia’s biggest shipping and logistics companies, was established in 1981 by the Kuok Group, the flagship of Kuok, who has an estimated wealth of US$14.6 billion according to Forbes magazine.
