Japan’s biggest shipping company is investing in a $1.2bn container port expansion in Vietnam in the latest bet on a gravitational shift of manufacturing from China to South East Asia.
The massive wager by Mitsui OSK Lines follows three years of increasing investment into nations of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations bloc by Japanese companies as Chinese labour costs surge and disputes with Beijing rumble menacingly in the background.
Mitsui’s symbolic port project in Hai Phong, which is being jointly undertaken by the Vietnamese government and others, will start operations in 2018 and double the capacity of the existing port that serves the growing electronics hub near Hanoi.