On the heels of a successful rollout in Japan, UPS announced the expansion of its UPS Preferred LCL (less-than-container-load) Ocean Freight service to 10 additional Asian ports. The service provides up to 40 percent faster port-to-door delivery to the United States for LCL shipments while still delivering the economic advantages of ocean freight.

UPS has just begun offering the Preferred LCL service to customers shipping to the United States from the Chinese ports of Shanghai, Shenzhen, Ningbo and Xiamen. The service will expand to origins in Busan, South Korea, and Taipei in March of this year and to Bangkok, Thailand; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Singapore, and Hong Kong in April.

"Amid a recovering economy, importers are seeking faster ways to get products to market while at the same time balancing transportation costs," said Jimmy Crabbe, vice president of ocean freight services at UPS. "With our Preferred LCL ocean service, we are giving customers more flexibility by offering another cost and speed option when considering air freight or ocean freight transportation."

The new UPS Preferred LCL Ocean Freight service can potentially cut a typical 3-to-4 week ocean transit time nearly in half. After arriving at a West coast port, Preferred LCL ocean shipments are moved through an expedited UPS North American ground network utilized for air freight shipments. This network ensures faster transit and day-definite delivery to more U.S. destination points than competing services and cuts 8-to-16 days of transit time off the current standard service for East coast deliveries.

In addition to speed, the Preferred LCL Ocean Freight service gives businesses full shipment visibility via UPS's technology solutions such as Quantum View Manage. UPS uses advanced handheld scanners and information management systems to capture and transmit delivery information not typically available for ocean shipments.

UPS's Preferred LCL service is ideal for customers in the high-tech/electronics, healthcare, retail and automotive industries, which also benefit from additional features including simplified per-kilo pricing, streamlined invoicing and day-definite delivery commitments.

In addition to Full Container Load service, the company offers a standard LCL service that provides reliable fixed-day port departures and arrivals supported with tracking technology. With scheduled service on 1,600 direct lanes between 116 countries, UPS's LCL services are accessible to trading partners responsible for 97 percent of the world's Gross Domestic Product.