CMA was founded at Marseilles in 1978, during which the company’s name is COMPAGNIE MARITIME D’AFFRETEMENT (hereinafter abbreviated to as CMA). At the beginning of foundation, the business range was only limited to Mediterranean Sea area. Nowadays 20 years later, the flags of CMA are flying over many large ports of north Europe, Black Sea, Baltic Sea, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Persian Bay, Intra-Asia, south-east Asia, east Asia, US east coast and west coast, and Caribbean Sea. Upon CMA extending its world lines, the company scale was enlarging. In 1996, CMA succeeded in purchasing the largest French state-owned shipping company--- CGM, and then set up the CMA-CGM Group. In addition, CMA also purchased Australian Regular Line ANL (Australian National Lines) in 1998. After that CMA-CGM (The French Line) becomes the leading carrier in world containerized liner shipping.

The services of CMA CGM occupy 212 ports of 126 countries. CMA-CGM has more than 400 agents and offices, and in China over 40. In 2003, CMA CGM has carried more than 287,000,000 containers to Asia, Middle Asia, Mediterranean Sea and Caribbean Sea.

CMA CGM owns the 6568 most experienced employees all over the world. They try their best continuously to consolidate and strengthen the shipping capacity, and enhance the service quality to fulfill all the customers’ requirements by the most effective ways.