Hyundai Glovis, BYD join forces on car shipping, logistics

South Korean logistics company Hyundai Glovis, part of the Hyundai Motor Group, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with BYD, China’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer, to cooperate on logistics and finished vehicle maritime transportation.

As per agreement signed on September 25, 2024, Hyundai Glovis intends to share its pure car and truck carriers (PCTCs) and global container logistics infrastructure with BYD.

In the logistics sector, the parties will explore collaboration in the container forwarding business utilizing Hyundai Glovis’ global logistics infrastructure/network. Forwarding refers to a cargo transportation specialist taking responsibility for and handling the entire transportation process from departure to arrival of cargo.

In the finished vehicle maritime transportation sector, they will review collaboration in which they will jointly utilize the ship space of car carriers currently owned by BYD.

In addition, the possibility of maritime transport of BYD finished vehicle exports via Hyundai Glovis’ car carriers will be reviewed in the mid to long term.

At the ‘2024 CEO Investor Day’ held in June, Hyundai Glovis announced plans to increase the non-affiliate sales ratio of the finished vehicle maritime transport sector to 50% over the next five years. The plan is to prioritize the transport of affiliated volumes but also increase sales growth by collaborating with non-affiliate customers. To this end, the fleet is expected to increase from the current 90 vessels to 128 vessels by 2030.

In May 2024, Hyundai Glovis ordered six 10,800 CEU LNG dual-fuel pure car and truck carriers (PCTCs) in China. The six-ship order is part of a batch of 10,000 CEU dual-fuel car carriers to be built by Guangzhou Shipyard International (GSI), part of China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), and operated by Hyundai Glovis.

In China, BYD — which overtook Tesla as the world’s biggest EV seller in 2023 — took delivery of its first car carrier in January this year. The delivery of 7,000 CEU LNG dual-fuel BYD Explorer No.1 marked the beginning of the era of China’s own transport of domestically built cars.