UES International Brand Guidelines: Grand View of 1996, a Hamburg Name & J.P. Morgan

A Hong Kong lessor with a Hamburg name.

UES began in 1996 under another name. The company’s history page says Grand View Development (HK) Limited, known as GVC, was registered in Hong Kong that year, and its team page says the founder, Huaisheng Zhang, set up the business as an agent for international shipping lines, container lessors and investors. Zhang remains founder, board director and chief executive of the group, according to the company.

The letters UES came from Germany. In January 2006 American Shipper reported that Grand View Development, which it described as an international container lessor based in Hong Kong, had acquired the shares of Unit Equipment Services AG, an equipment leasing company based in Hamburg. The two firms said they would continue to operate independently under the same names and the same management, with their headquarters remaining in Hong Kong and Hamburg, and that they would explore running a global short-term master lease operation together. Between them they managed more than 420,000 TEU, the report said, and the companies presented the new equity arrangement as giving both of them the financial strength to keep growing in niche markets.

The two names later became one. UES’s history page says that by November 2007 GVC’s fleet had passed 500,000 TEU, including more than 15 types of marine container and various types of intermodal equipment, and that in December 2007 GVC was renamed UES International (HK) Limited. With the new name it widened its offer to include term leases, master leases and finance leases for containers and intermodal equipment, the company says.

Primavera, then J.P. Morgan’s clients.

Outside capital came in twice, the company says. In May 2012 a new holding company, UES International (HK) Holdings Limited, was set up to take over the assets, liabilities and operations of UES International (HK) Limited, following investment by a wholly owned subsidiary of funds managed by Primavera Capital, according to the history page.

In December 2021, according to the same page, institutional investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management acquired a majority stake in UES Investment Limited from Primavera and committed further capital to support the growth of the container portfolio. The company says the founder kept his shareholding, the senior management team continued to lead the business, and the headquarters moved to Bermuda under the new corporate entity, UES Investment Ltd.

That leaves a group whose legal home and working base sit in different places. The website footer gives UES Investment Limited’s office in Hamilton, Bermuda, while the team page says the group has a significant presence in China, where its management team and operation centre are based. The company lists offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Hamburg, Miami, London, Singapore and Bermuda, and says its senior managers average more than 30 years of experience in leasing and shipping.

How container lessors present themselves.

Container lessors own the steel boxes that shipping lines fill and move. A carrier that does not want to buy every box it needs can lease them for a few months or many years, return them at a depot and lease again somewhere else. The lessors earn their names on the boxes themselves: a company wordmark, often in a strong blue, orange or green, painted on the doors and sides of containers that travel the world’s ports and railways for years.

Their websites are built around that fleet. Most sort it by box type: standard and high-cube dry containers for general cargo; refrigerated containers, or reefers, for chilled and frozen goods; tank containers for liquids; and specials such as flat racks, open tops and palletwide boxes for cargo that does not fit a standard van. Photographs of stacked dry, reefer and tank containers, as the companies publish them, do much of the visual work, together with technical sheets that give each box’s dimensions and standards.

The next layer is the network. Lessors publish depot maps and depot finders, lists of regional offices and customer portals where shipping lines can book, return and track their units. Many also sell boxes: pages for the sale of used containers offer units at the end of their marine life for storage, conversion or one more trip, and some lessors invite outside investors to own container portfolios that the lessor manages.

Behind the boxes sits finance. Container leasing is a business of long-lived assets and long contracts, so ownership matters, and many of the companies in this series have been merged, listed, taken private or folded into larger groups. Their investor pages and press releases are where those changes are recorded, and this guide sets out what each company’s own pages and dated reports show.

Dry boxes, leased and sold.

UES describes its business as the leasing and trading of dry cargo containers. Its services page says it leases to more than 100 shipping lines and sells to more than 1,000 end users of containers, and that it owns boxes and also manages them on behalf of third-party investors. The company gives its current fleet as more than 1,260,000 TEU, with container depots in more than 160 locations.

The range is set out by box type. UES lists general-purpose dry containers in 20-foot and 40-foot sizes and high-cube units in 40-foot, 45-foot and 48-foot lengths, alongside special equipment: open tops, flat racks, reefers and tank containers. Three service lines sit beside the fleet: leasing on short and long terms, trading of containers from the fleet, and container management for third-party investors, whose container assets UES says it monitors closely.

A sister trading name sells new equipment. Grand View Container Trading, whose website links to UES and shares its contact telephone number, says it was established in 1996, gives a Shanghai address and supplies new dry vans, open tops, flat racks and refrigerated containers, built to its own specification or modified for buyers with options such as extra vents, side markings, finished colours and bamboo floors. It says it is based in mainland China, where, it says, more than 90 per cent of the world’s marine containers are produced.

The company’s stated aims are written for several audiences at once. Its about page gives a vision of efficient leasing and intermodal transport services through a worldwide network, reaching out from the Far East and around the globe, and a mission of being a reliable partner to four groups: shareholders, customers, suppliers and employees. The same page highlights three themes: global reach, responsiveness and experience.

The UES website itself is functional: a container-tracking tool, a depot list sorted by country and city, and a page for each service. For a design guide, UES shows how a lessor whose history runs through Hong Kong, Hamburg, Shanghai and Bermuda presents itself through fleet figures and box types rather than through a single home city. Compare Florens, another Hong Kong container lessor, and Textainer. For this guide we use a slate blue, a steel grey and a rust orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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