With thanksgiving inspiration; Evergreen with Society

What is the relationship between the development of corporation and social responsibility? Is it true that concerning about social responsibility will block the way for corporation to develop? To answer the above questions, Mr. Wang Longxiong claims that corporation development and social responsibility are inseparable; and corporation should develop together with the improvement of social well-being.

Two years ago, Evergreen has received the award The Best Social Responsible Corporation from the magazine International Shipping Transportation, because the company has always been protecting environment and contributing to education. Not only the ward is an honor; but also a realistic reflection for long lasting social responsibility performed by Evergreen Line.

Evergreen has been founded based on only one break bulk vessel. After 40 years, it now has become an international group, which covers all air, land and sea transportation services. The true meaning of being alive is to do good deeds is everyone's believe in Evergreen. It is never left out, no matter how busy the company is in operating and developing. It is the essential vision of the series charity events Concern about hometown; Contribute to society implemented by Evergreen. In addition, the company has been trying to spread the theory of sea transportation into everywhere in society; for example: conceptual S-ship and Maritime Museum.

Evergreen is another home for me; and also the warmest support 

     
Reporter: You have been working in Evergreen for 30 years. Maybe it is only the initial developing stage for the corporation, but it is your most refulgent experience in life. How do you view this experience and the relationship with Evergreen?
Mr. Wang Longxiong: Evergreen is another home to me; and is also my strongest support. Mr. Zhang President of Evergreen is like the core of this big family. With his kindness and selfless inspiration; he leads the way and help us to advocate the Evergreen's inspiration Challenge, Innovation and Teamwork. With his great leadership, we have overcome so many difficulties and achieve today's success.

I graduated from Taiwan Cheng Kung University; and had the honor to join in Evergreen so that I can implement my professional area. I would like to thank Mr. Zhang President of Evergreen for giving me this great opportunity. During the past 30 years in Evergreen, I have had various opportunities to learn and improve my professional skills. I have learned so much about international shipping industry, like customer booking, checking bill of loading, cargo consolidation and some other front-line tasks; and also some complicated tasks like worldwide booking plan and strategic plan of service routes. Moreover, I have been in Italy and Germany to be in charge of overseas offices operation. Now I have grown into a professional managing expert to look after the whole corporation operation. All these steps and experiences have really helped me a lot. 

2008 is the 40 years anniversary of Evergreen; and also is my 30th year working in this corporation. I am very happy to grow up together with our corporation Evergreen. International shipping industry is responsible for carrying 90% of world trading; and it has major impacts on increasing international trading and improving people's life standard. In future, I will still be very keen to cooperate with experts, talents from world shipping industry and make our contributions to the market. I just wish Evergreen Line Group and the shipping world could be evergreen.

Spread shipping culture into everywhere in society

Reporter: What is the relationship between the development of corporation and social responsibility? Is it true that concerning about social responsibility will block the way for corporation to develop?
Mr. Wang Longxiong: Evergreen has been founded based on only one break bulk vessel. After 40 years, it now has become international group, which covers all air, land and sea transportation services. The true meaning of being alive is to do good deeds is everyone's believe in Evergreen. It is never left out, no matter how busy the company is in operating and developing. It is the essential vision of the series charity events Concern about hometown; Contribute to society implemented by Evergreen. Since 1985, Evergreen Line Group has founded Body Corporate Zhang Rongfa Funding and Body Corporate Beneficence Zhang Rongfa Funding to make long-term contribution to social charity, medical system and also education specializing in shipping field.

In Jul. 2001, The Evergreen Line Group Philharmonic was founded as a branch of Body Corporate Zhang Rongfa Funding. Until now, it is the first private own philharmonic in the world. Since then, The Evergreen Line Group Philharmonic has trained so many young musicians, provided the platform and also continued musicians' professional life. By stimulating musical industry, it helps eliminate social anger and bring more peace into society. The Evergreen Line Group Philharmonic has about 50 performances every year and is well experienced in overseas performance. The Philharmonic has been invited to Singapore, Tokyo, Xiamen, Beijing, Shanghai, London, Norway, America and some other areas for performing concert; and achieved great success.

Another branch of Body Corporate Zhang Rongfa Funding is called Maritime Museum. It has entered into the final stage before open. It will start operation in 2008. It has got very rich collection, including various ship models, shipping instrument and other shipping collections. And they will be displayed in active interaction and multiple-media. Moreover, we will also cooperate with other well-known international museums to improve the educational objectives; and provide the opportunity of learning about maritime.

Evergreen Line Group has received the award The Best Social Responsible Corporation from the magazine International Shipping Transportation, because the company has always been protecting environment and contributing to education. The award committee states that in order to protect environment, Mr. Zhang Rongfa has decided to develop conceptual S-ship without any concerns about the expenditure. The fact says that Mr. Zhang Rongfa pays significant attentions to environment and has the insights.

Mr. Zhang Rongfa claims that all shipping companies should be responsible for decreasing negative effects on environment when they are shipping. He also believes that all of us should not be regulated only by law, but by our own inspiration too. We need to keep the idea of protecting environment in mind always. We should be more active to improve shipping technology; and try our best to improve sea environment and safety in port areas.

Reporter: what is the business culture of Evergreen? What is the relationship between business culture and creating economic benefit? What is the major force of Evergreen 40 year's full-speed development?
Mr. Wang Longxiong: At the very start, Evergreen only has one second-hand break bulk vessel; today the corporation already has 170 container vessels. The total transportation capacity exceeds 600,000 TEU, which creates a world-leading brand. Mr. Zhang believes the reason behind Evergreen's great success is its business value, which states as Challenge, Innovation, Teamwork. 

The first element of Evergreen's business value is Challenge. Everyone in Evergreen will step up and try everything to achieve business goal when any potential difficulties or problems come. It is very important for the fast development of Evergreen.

What do we mean by Innovation? I will explain a little here. By Innovation we mean global value system and the eye of insight. For example, when someone in Evergreen has been allocated to overseas offices; they should study and analyze the local advantages, cultures or other good things in their leisure time. As a result, they will form their own global value system gradually.

By Teamwork we mean getting along and cooperation within the organization. Under all negative external environments, we still can break through our way out to achieve great success.

Challenge, Innovation Teamwork has always been the original force of our fast development. Challenge stimulates Evergreen to implement multiple dimensions global investment strategy; as a result Evergreen has widened its services to other shipping related areas. Facing fierce competition, Innovation brings Evergreen competitive advantages and service differentiation from all other competitors; and also increases added values; as a result Evergreen easily avoid the price war. In the current shipping industry, there are large amount of cargoes and complicated documents to handle within every little details. In addition, companies need to meet the requirement of Anti-Terrorism. That is why we need Teamwork to maintain the whole service chain and satisfy customer's marketing needs.

Moreover, we deeply believe the statement People is the most valuable asset of company. Only qualified employees can build up a solid foundation for company; develop business and contribute to long-term operation. We encourage everyone in Evergreen to become top student in school and top personnel in society.

Steady Operation—The Competitive Advantage of EVERGREEN

Reporter: EVERGREEN is ranked as global top 10 liner companies, are you satisfied with this result? What is the ideal place of your company?
Mr. Wang Longxiong: The enlargement of shipping capacity is one of the ways to increase the benefits, but it cannot assure it. A moderate enlargement is good for promoting the market share, but the extreme enlargement will lead to an excess of shipping space and affect the market stability. So for an enterprise, the rank is not important. It is more important to coordinate with the market and maintain good profitability to keep a steady operation.

As an important member of world shipping industry, EVERGREEN is eager to enlarge the operation scale to supply a more complete service network. Now the plan is being evaluated cautiously and will be implemented at a right time and a reasonable cost

Reporter: In recent years, it is very popular to invest in port and many shipping companies are interested in making investment. What does EVERGREEN do and what are the benefits? Are they in accordance with the developing direction of EVERGREEN?
Mr. Wang Longxiong: EVERGREEN is always operating and investing in ports actively and has founded many regional transshipment center including Kaohsiung, Colon and Taranto.

At present, the centers invested by EVERGREEN in terminal in the world are as follows: LA, Oakland and Tacoma of US, Kaohsiung and Taichung of Taiwan, Tokyo and Osaka of Japan, Laem Chabang of Thailand, Colon of Panama, Busan of Korea and Taranto of Italy.

A joint venture port by EVERGREEN, YML and WANHAI—Taipei Port, will be completed by the end of 2008 and start operating officially at the beginning of 2009. We will construct a port with 7 container berths, 2367 meters of harbor coastline length and 4 million TEU of handling capacity.

As the prosperous and well-operated world container market, the port EVERGREEN invested has made a great achievement in handling capacity and operation performance. 

Reporter: What is the advantage of EVERGREEN? Can you make an introduction from safety, service or others?
Mr. Wang Longxiong: The idea of steady operation is the foundation of competitive advantage of EVERGREEN. In this industry, micro management is very crucial for the success. Briefly speaking, it means to deeply analyze the problems and do the best. As for the investment of transportation service, we should emphasize on both shipping capacity enlargement and shipping safety. As for the achievement of the profitable goal, we should quit competing with lower price and insist on supplying good service for long-term support from our clients. We believe, only the steady operation can assure the long-term operation.  

We also take a strategy of independent operation according to the idea. We can adjust our lines designing and ships allocation to the shipping market without constrained by associated shipping companies. In addition, compared with the associated shipping companies, we can improve our service quality more efficiently so that we can keep our promise to the clients without any default or conflict with those associated companies.

In safety, the enlargement of the global shipping capacity leads to the serious shortage of the sailors and posed a threat for the shipping safety. To ensure the shipping safety and prevent the ocean accident and pollution, our group founded EVERGREEN sailors training center in 1999. The center is equipped with perfect facilities and professional training for sailors. People safe. Ship safe, Cargo safe is the ocean transportation mission. We got Excellent Award of Educational Training awarded by England professional shipping media—Lloyd Newspaper Group in 2003, which honored our efforts and contribution on sailor's professional training.

Service aspect: In the new economic time with both importance of efficiency and knowledge, the implement of information technology is the essential element of success. Consequently we design various e-commerce services, including Electronic Shipping Schedule, which provide customers interactive point-to-point ship schedule service; Cargo Tracking System, which helps shippers have the update information of cargo location; Electronic Bill, which can help customers directly look up the contents of bill online and print it out. Moreover, Log Net has awarded Evergreen the Excellence E-Commerce Award to confirm the company's achievement in improving E-commerce services.  

Balanced Development of World Economy
Reporter: What is your prediction on world shipping market in 2008? Do you agree with the idea about world economy transferring to the East?
Mr. Wang Longxiong: According to the entire development direction of world shipping market, the continuous heating of the world economy will make a solid foundation for the development of international trade. At the same time, the globalization will help encourage the consumption of imported commodities and accelerate the development of shipping market.

As the increasing oil price, the capacity allocation has changed structurally. More and more ship owners put in more ships to low the navigation speed and control the oil cost. It will make the increase of essential shipping space lower than growth rate of ship capacity so as to balance the supply and demand of capacity in shipping market.

The adjustment of EU has promoted the economic development of European area in recent years and the enlargement of EU members will improve the whole economic strength in European area. I believe that the far Europe line with a good base will make a better development again in 2008.

The ocean freight of Asia-America will make a prominent increase this year because of the implementing of capacity allocation and the balance of the operating costs. In addition, the benefits getting from the United States presidential election will promote the supply and demand.

As for the transfer of the world economy, some emerging countries in Asia have made a great economic development with the help of globalization in recent years. Compared with the moderate growth of developed countries, it is indeed attractive. However, the developed countries own the competitive advantages of techniques and brand. Because of their industrial modal of creating values by knowledge and culture, they cannot be replaced completely by eastern emerging countries.

In fact, each country's economy is connected closely in the world because of the free and open policy. The western capitalists hold eastern enterprises’'shares, and the eastern economic growth reflects the status of western economy. The eastern consumers whose economic conditions have improved gradually demand and pursue western brand and commodity so that those western enterprises improve their economic status.

Therefore, the developing direction of the world economy should be the East catching up and making mutual benefits with the West for a long time.

Reporter: How do you consider the problem of decreasing the logistics cost? How about the multi-modal development of EVERGREEN?
Mr. Wang Longxiong: As the development of open policy and free trade, the production and consumption in the world operate more efficiently. The combination of capital and techniques of developed countries and the low production cost of emerging countries makes the world economy more prosperous and flourishing. This trend makes the production base far away from the consumption market and promotes the economic dependent of each country. It also makes the international shipping companies play a more important role. Only the successful operation of transport industry can realize the economic benefits of international division of labor.

During the development of the container shipping industry, the service has been changed from Port to Port to Point to Point. The shipping companies have also used super-large ships to decrease the unit cost. At the same time, terminal, railway and road industry should accelerate the operation efficiency so as to avoid the bottleneck problem and decrease the logistics cost.

In recent years, the rapid increase of cargos on lines of Far East and Europe makes the European ports' capacity face huge challenges. The crowd of the port will delay the delivery time of the cargos and increase the cost. Therefore, EVERGREEN enlarges the shipping capacity via Mediterranean and improves the transshipment by railway from Trieste, Italy to Budapest and Munich so that the clients could choose more convenient service.