MOL’s CEO Reveals Areas of Focus for Coming Year(s)

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On the occasion of MOL’s 135th anniversary, Junichiro Ikeda, the company’s president & CEO, delivered a speech to employees on April 1, 2019. During the speech, he presented the company’s new Rolling Plan 2019.

As informed by Ikeda, “aiming to make the MOL Group a collection of businesses that have a clear advantage and boast the highest competitiveness” has been positioned as the vision for MOL ten years from now.

The vision has been unveiled after the company reviewed three core pillars it set forth. These include providing stress-free services from a customer perspective, promoting environmental strategies and developing the emission-free business into one of MOL’s future core operations, and investing management resources in fields where MOL has the greatest strength as the newly added pillar.

“By adding the element of ‘from a customer’s perspective’ to stress-free services, and taking various strategic measures to address environmental issues, we will further enhance our relative competitiveness,” MOL’s president and CEO said.

By following the first two pillars, MOL intends to move forward with five group-wide priorities — marine technical skills, ICT strategy, technology development, environment and emission-free businesses, and work style reforms — as mid-term actions.

The company’s key phrases for 2019 fiscal year are said to be ‘LNG fuel’, ‘use and application of data toward autonomous sailing (promotion of Senpaku ISHIN NEXT)’, and ‘workplace reforms’.

Moreover, the company wants to further develop its strengths and improve competitiveness by focusing its management resources on fields where MOL has the greatest strength, particularly the offshore business.

In addition, MOL has set focus themes for FY2019. One theme is to establish a group-wide safety and quality management system with the objective of reflecting seriously on the incidents that occurred at the end of last year.

The second theme is developing a strategic response to stricter regulations on SOx emissions effective in January 2020.

“We have a daunting list of things to do-complete the technological verification of compliant fuel oils, properly time the changeover from current fuels, secure a supply of compliant fuel and negotiate with business partners and customers, to name just a few. This is a big challenge for the ocean shipping industry, but I think this is a good opportunity to differentiate our businesses at the same time,” Ikeda added.

Ikeda also said that a new organizational structure will be established to support the promotion of Rolling Plan 2019.

“We are currently seeing a trend toward economic deceleration, and the ocean shipping market still faces many uncertain factors. By no means we can say that we are in a strong position in our field,”Ikeda pointed out.

“We set sail in FY2019 while anticipating rough seas, but we can see our course clearly. The will … and our accumulated efforts and achievements, must become the impetus for further growth,” he concluded.

For fiscal year 2018, MOL expects its ordinary profit to exceed its initial outlook. This is due to wide-ranging efforts made to improve profits under Rolling Plan 2018.