OOCL Celebrates 50th Anniversary With The Hong Kong Community

On November 10, 2019, OOCL held a 50th Anniversary Free Family Fun Day event at the Hong Kong Maritime Museum (HKMM) to celebrate the company‘s fifty years anniversary with the Hong Kong community and just before the kickoff of the Maritime Week in the city.  

Specially arranged exhibits, videos, souvenirs and family activities were organized to share with visitors who came to learn more about Hong Kong‘s home carrier and the city‘s colorful maritime history. In November of 1969, OOCL‘s founder Mr. C. Y. Tung made international headlines for establishing one of the first Asian carriers to provide regular containerized shipping services between the Far East and the West Coast of the United States.  

OOCL‘s first box ships were all converted from its conventional liners with a carrying capacity of just 300 TEUs and they were known as the Victory class in the fleet.

The first container sailing saw just 13 TEUs transported across the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to Long Beach, California, with an all Chinese crew.  In comparison to OOCL‘s latest G-class vessels like the OOCL Hong Kong with a carrying capacity of 21,413 TEU, the ultra-large containerships in our fleet today ships hundreds of thousands of containers each day, a far cry from the early days of containerization that began 50 years ago. 

“OOCL is deeply rooted in Hong Kong and very proud of our long heritage in this port city we call home,” said Mr. Andy Tung, Co-Chief Executive Officer of OOCL. 

“Together with Hong Kong, we witnessed the birth of containerization which changed the course of shipping and our company‘s history.  We also saw the beginning of modern globalization where Hong Kong earned a prominent place on the trade map, and OOCL was there to link the city to markets around the world.   

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