MOL announces merger of MOL Marine and MOL Engineering

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd., (MOL) today announced its intent to merge its wholly owned subsidiaries MOL Marine Co., Ltd. (President: Toshikazu Inaoka; Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo) and MOL Engineering Co., Ltd., effective April 1.

The merging companies were both established in 1988. Since then, MOL Marine’s core competence has been consultancy related to port harbor facilities and marine traffic, training of seafarers using large simulators. It also manages submarine cable-laying vessels, which are indispensable for today’s information-based society. On the other hand, MOL Engineering’s specialty has been inspection and maintenance of marine equipment, including migration to evolving international regulations, such as retrofitting of ballast water management systems in 2015, and SOx scrubbers in 2019.

In the background of the merger, COVID-19 has impacted the consumer behavior among the global economy. Shipping faces higher expectations for contributions to a more efficient value chain, while continuing its momentum of decarbonization to mitigate the environmental load. The MOL Group considers these expectations as an opportunity to align an organization that can tackle the current and future demands by providing tangible and intangible seamless services, through the merging of the two companies.

The merger will also positively affect the offshore businesses and the autonomous shipping development, which the MOL Group defines as  business fields to concentrate its management resources。The dynamic positioning system that enables precise positioning of vessels under various marine conditions which MOL Marine has developed through submarine cable-laying, and the extensive engineering experience of MOL Engineering will be MOL Groups unique competency that will contribute to area’s such as Floating LNG power generation and Offshore Wind power generation. The offshore technology will be concentrated in close cooperation with MOL and will evolve the merging companies to a further advantage both in safety and technology.