Through safe and dependable monohakobi (transport), we contribute to the betterment of societies throughout the world as a comprehensive global logistics enterprise offering ocean, land, and air transportation.
NYK also pursued its diversification by building tankers for both oil and ores and developing a fleet of car carriers. These promising beginnings, however, were partially offset by a series of shocks in the early 1970s. These included a revaluation of the Japanese yen and a major strike, both of which increased the cost of Japanese shipping. In addition, the oil crisis entailed both a short-term boom and long-term risk. Freight conferences were threatened by flag-preference policies of developing countries—the latter shipped goods on the ships of their own countries wherever possible—supported by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and rate-cutting wars on the Pacific undermined profitability there. During this era of crisis for the shipping industry, NYK displayed remarkable strategic adaptability. Its most decisive move was a partial withdrawal in 1975 from the tanker business, to the point of canceling contracts on some ships already under construction, even though this business was still very profitable. The wisdom of this decision was borne out in the 1980s when several Japanese firms that had continued to pursue the oil tanker boom went bankrupt. Meanwhile, NYK continued to diversify, ordering liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers and a larger fleet of car carriers to service the growing exports of automobiles to North America. With its still profitable base in conferences systems, these moves gave NYK a balanced business profile that enabled it to remain the largest and generally most profitable Japanese shipping firm into the early 1990s.