Since its establishment in April 1995 and official business initiation in January 1996, Vietnam National Shipping Lines （Vinalines） has continously improved its management, organization, and production capacity, accquiring a high growth rate in both productivity and financial targets and playing aleading role in the Vietnam maritime industry.
Combining advantages and strengths of almost 60 member and affiliated companies in an overall investment, development and operation policy, Vinalines has been successfully performing the following tasks:
developing and operating an advanced shipping fleet comprising of oil tankers, full-container and roll-on/roll-off vessels；
 developing and managing a seaport system along the coast of 3,254km with some major ports located in key economic areas in Vietnam
setting up and gradually improving an integrated transport network in the whole country；
 providing different kinds of maritime services such as shipping agency, shipbrokering, freight forwarding, multi-modal transport operation, ship repair, crew manning and other related business；
Group History:
Established and operated on 01/01/1996 by the Decision of the Prime Minister, Vinalines consisted of 22 state companies,02 stock holdings and 09 joint-ventures, owned 49 ships with the total tonnage of 396,696 DWT and had 18,456 employees.
For strengthening its position, an ambitious 5-year plan for the period of 1996-2000 was submitted and successfully completed. In result, the Vinalines’ fleet grew up to 79 ships （844,521 DWT） including 9 container ships with total capacity of 6,102 TEU and the fleet’s productivity reached 14 tons/DWT/annum. The improvement of Saigon Port and Haiphong Port and the construction of new container berth in Cantho allowed port operations productivity reached 2,800 tons/berth-meter/annum. Beside, Vinalines upgraded the ICDs’ capacity in Thu Duc, Gia Lam and Dong Nai and invested in new facilities and equipments in terms of adapting to modern transport application.
During this period, annual revenue grew up 8%-21%/annum. In 2000, the revenue was multiplied by 2,16 in comparing to in 1995, reached VND 4,270.00 billion and the gross profit was about 326 billion VND.
On the base of this success, for the period of 2001-2005, Vinalines’ fleet grew up to 103 ships （1.2 million DWT） including 43 purchases and 10 new-buildings （within the scope of new-building program between Vinalines and Vinashin as approved by the Decision 1419/QD-TTg of the Prime Minister on 01/11/2001, by which, Vinashin undertakes to build 32 vessels of total 403,260 DWT for Vinalines）
During this 5 years, 3,290 berth meters were improved and built to accommodate vessels from 10,000 to 40,000 DWT. Many upgrading and renovating projects were completed which helped Vinalines’ total berth length grow up to 8,603 m, and therefore raised the productivity to 3,125 tons/berth-meter by the end of 2005.
In parallel, several investing projects in warehouses, ICDs, vehicles and other facilities serving maritime activities as well as expanding Vinalines’ business to other sectors were carried out, such as Ocean Park building project with 19 floors and 2 underground levels, joint-venture project with STC Group （with partner from the Netherlands） in establishment of a crew training center in Haiphong, etc,.
In 2009, the total revenue of the group reached VND 18,195.038 billion with gross profit of about VND 857,039 billion.