Yangtze River Delta promotes port integration

Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui in the Yangtze River Delta have been promoting port integration in recent years by cooperating to develop port economy in the northern part of Xiaoyangshan Mountain.

Zhang Xin, vice-president of the Shanghai International Port Group, said business cooperation has been very frequent between the Shanghai port and those in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui provinces over the past year thanks to the acceleration of YRD integration.

The Shanghai port signed a deal with the Zhejiang Seaport Group on Feb 19 last year, making the latter a shareholder in the Shanghai Shengdong International Container Terminal Co, a subsidiary of Shanghai International Port Group. The company will be the sole developer and operator of the northern part of Xiaoyangshan Mountain.

"Jiangsu Port Group will also participate in the Xiaoyangshan Mountain project in the future," said Zhang, adding that the city of Wuhu in Anhui launched regular liners to the mountain last year.

The fourth-phase Yangshan Dock, which started trial operations on Dec 10, 2017, is currently the world's largest automated dock. It handled more than 3.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units last year.

The outline of the YRD integration plan made it clear that the four areas should coordinate to build shipping routes, integrate shipping resources and improve port layout, in order to build a world-class port cluster.

"We have been cooperating with the other three areas to increase ship shifts on Nanjing-Xiaoyangshan Mountain and Nanjing-Ningbo routes," said Tang Hongsheng, deputy general manager of the Jiangsu Port Group.

Statistics show that Jiangsu Port Group handled 22 percent more large vessels in 2019 than the previous year.

"In the future, we can focus on improving port resource allocation, data interconnectivity and port efficiency," said Zhang.