# Yang Ming Marine Transport Corporation

Yang Ming Marine Transport Corporation (Chinese: 陽明海運; pinyin: Yáng Míng Hǎi Yùn) is a Taiwanese container shipping company based in Keelung, Taiwan.

## History

The company was founded in 1972 as a shipping line, but has historical links through its merger with the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company (1872–1995), which dates back to the Qing Dynasty.
Yang Ming currently operates 101 container ships up to 14,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) and 17 bulk carriers.
In between July and September 2018, Yang Ming agreed to offer a service from the Port of Keelung, Taiwan, to the US for two batches of nearly 20 containers each, containing over 1700 unused nuclear fuel rods, after the Taiwan Power Company decided to close its fourth nuclear plant. Safety concerns for possible leakage of radioactive materials were raised, and the first shipment was attended by over 200 police officers and company officers.
On 10 March 2019, Yang Ming has welcomed two additional 14,000 TEU vessels in its fleet, YM Warranty and YM Wellspring. The ships have been built in Japan at Imabari Shipbuilding, at a cost of nearly $99 million each. The additional tonnage is composed of sisters of the previously delivered YM Wellbeing, YM Wonderland and YM Wisdom.
In May 2019, under the scope of improving its network, an agreement with the Canadian Pacific Railway was reached to have containers moved by rail from the Port of Vancouver eastbound to all Canada.

## Subsidiaries

The Yang Ming Group includes a logistics unit (Yes Logistics Corp. and Jing Ming Transport Co.), container terminals in Taiwan, Belgium, Netherlands and the USA, as well as stevedoring services (Port of Kaohsiung, Taiwan). Yang Ming's service scope covers over 70 nations with more than 170 service points

## THE Alliance - Premier Alliance

Along with Hapag-Lloyd, HMM Co Ltd, and Ocean Network Express, Yang Ming Marine Transport Corporation was a member of THE Alliance. THE Alliance was intended to provide 34 services, directly calling at 81 different ports on a monthly basis. From March 2025, THE Alliance was replaced by Premier Alliance, composed by the same members, excluding Hapag-Lloyd.

## Fleet

As of mid-2019, Yang Ming operated a fleet of over 4.2-million-D.W.T / operating capacity 643 thousand TEU, of which container ships are the main service force.
Container ship classes of Yang Ming :
| Ship class | Built | Capacity (TEU) | Ships in class | Notes |
| U-class | 2008–2013 | 8626 | 8 | |
| B class | 2010-2017 | 2826 | 19 |
| W-class | 2015–2019 | 14,078–14,200 | 20 | 15 ships under long-term charter from Seaspan Corporation 5 ships under long-term charter from Shoei Kisen Kaisha. |
| T-class | 2020–2022 | 11,714–12,726 | 14 | 5 ships under long-term charter from Costamare, 9 ships under long-term charter from Shoei Kisen Kaisha |
| TBD | 2025–2026 | 15,000 | 5 | To be built by Hyundai Heavy Industries. |

## Accidents and incidents
### YM Efficiency

On 4 June 2018, the container ship YM Efficiency lost 83 containers at sea due to extreme rough weather conditions close to Australia, New South Wales coast, that made the cargo break their lashing and fall into the waters. A safety warning had to be issued, as despite the fact that no dangerous goods were discharged into the sea, some medical and surgical items were noted floating and then recovered ashore, polluting a number of beaches.

### YM Mobility

On 9 August 2024, the container ship YM Mobility caught fire in the port of Ningbo, due to a reported explosion in a container. No one was injured.