COSCO Shipping
COSCO Shipping (legal entity COSCO Shipping Lines Co., Ltd.) is a mega-carrier headquartered in Shanghai, China. Founded in 1961, the line has spent 65 years building out its container service network and today operates a fleet of 528 vessels under the SCAC code COSU. Total operated capacity stands near 3,200,000 TEU, placing the carrier among the recognised operators on its core trade lanes.
COSCO Shipping is most active on the following corridors: Asia-Europe, Transpacific, Asia-Mediterranean, Intra-Asia. Through its membership of the Ocean Alliance, the carrier shares vessel capacity with CMA CGM, Evergreen Marine, OOCL on East-West services. Direct customer contact is available via +86 21 3501 8888 or the carrier's web portal at lines.coscoshipping.com.
COSCO Shipping sample transit times
Indicative point-to-point transit times for services on which COSCO Shipping appears in rotation. Actual ETAs vary with vessel rotation, port congestion, weather and trans-shipment patterns. We update these figures every quarter against published carrier schedules.
| Origin | Destination | Transit | Frequency | Corridor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shanghai, China | Rotterdam, Netherlands | 32 days | Daily sailings via 7 services | Asia-Europe |
| Ningbo, China | Hamburg, Germany | 35 days | Multiple weekly | Asia-Europe |
| Shenzhen, China | Felixstowe, United Kingdom | 30 days | Weekly | Asia-Europe |
| Shanghai, China | Piraeus, Greece | 28 days | Weekly | Asia-Mediterranean |
See all 8 corridors served by COSCO Shipping →
How to track a COSCO Shipping container
Tracking a COSCO Shipping container starts with confirming the prefix. Look at the container's left-hand corner casting plate or the painted code on the door — the four-letter ISO 6346 owner code is followed by six numeric digits and a single check digit. Blue Water Facts no longer publishes a per-carrier owner-prefix list (see /accuracy/ for why); confirm the operator via the carrier's own tracking portal or your bill of lading. Visit lines.coscoshipping.com, navigate to the carrier's tracking or "track and trace" portal, and paste the full container number. The portal will return current vessel position, the next scheduled port call, the estimated time of arrival (ETA) and the most recent equipment events such as gate-in, loaded, discharged and gate-out.
If the carrier portal does not return a result, the most likely causes are: the container has not yet been gate-in at the origin terminal, the bill of lading number is in a different format (check whether the system expects an MBL versus an HBL), or the box is moving on a partner alliance vessel rather than a COSCO Shipping hull. In the last case, the schedule data lives with the operating carrier, not the equipment owner. COSCO Shipping's customer service can normally cross-reference the booking and route you to the correct alliance partner. Reach the carrier on +86 21 3501 8888 during European business hours.
Related ocean carriers
Operators most often compared with COSCO Shipping on overlapping trade lanes:
- CMA CGM — Marseille, France, founded 1978. SCAC CMDU.
- Evergreen Marine — Taoyuan, Taiwan, founded 1968. SCAC EGLV.
- OOCL — Hong Kong, founded 1969. SCAC OOLU.
- China United Lines — Shanghai, China, founded 2018. SCAC CULU.
- ANL — Melbourne, Australia, founded 1956. SCAC ANNU.
- Sinotrans Container Lines — Shanghai, China, founded 1992. SCAC SNLT.