China Shipping (Group) Co plans to list its container business on overseas stock markets this year.

　　The company,the second-largest shipping operator on the Chinese mainland, turned its container shipping arm into a share-holding company yesterday, which industry insiders say is the first step for preparing its overseas listing.

　　It will be the first mainland container shipping company to sell shares overseas, according to Su Xingang, a senior official with the marine transportation sector under China's Ministry of Communications.

　　"We expect the establishment of the container share-holding company to further expand our container business, which is already our pillar revenue source," said Li Kelin, president of China Shipping.

　　Initial capitalization of the new company is 3.83 billion yuan (US$461.4 million).

　　But company officials didn't reveal details of the overseas listing plan, such as when and where they would list shares, citing restrictions by the securities watchdog.

　　Normally, Hong Kong and New York are the two main markets where domestic companies seek public investors.

　　Li hopes its container fleet will attain a capacity topping 350,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers by the end of 2005.

　　By 2010, it aims to further expand its container lines to include a total capacity of between 500,000 TEUs and 600,000 TEUs.

　　Currently, China Shipping is operating a fleet of more than 120 container ships with a total capacity of 205,000 TEUs and is ranked as one of the world's ten largest container-ship companies.

　　The booming container-shipping market helped turn the company's container business from a money-losing sector in 2002 into a major income source last year.

　　The whole group recorded a turnover of around 30.7 billion yuan last year, with about 18 billion coming from the container shipping. The company carried about 3.52 million TEUs of containers last year, surging 26 percent from a year earlier.