Yantian Port’s east operation area (on the right side) began its construction Wednesday. Liang Yinxing, Wang Zhe
Yantian Port initiated the construction of its container terminals in the east operation area Wednesday, marking a step forward for Shenzhen building a port-based national logistics hub.
The project has an estimated investment of 14.49 billion yuan (US$2.28 billion) and will include four subprojects such as a Phase I project, a link passage and auxiliary and supporting projects, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported Thursday.
The Phase I project will have three automated container berths for vessels as heavy as 200,000 tons built along the 1.47-kilometer coast. The port’s water is 18 meters deep and its land area for container operation is 1.2 million square meters.
The three berths are designed to handle 3 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) a year. A 2.1-kilometer passage will be built to link with Yantian Port’s east and central operation areas.
In the east operation area, a railway will be built to connect to the city’s other railways. Digital projects will also be launched to integrate port operations with 5G communications, BeiDou satellite systems, blockchain, big data, artificial intelligence and the internet. The east operation area aims to become world-leading smart and green container port.
Yantian Port contributes half of Shenzhen Port’s container throughput, one-third of Guangdong’s trade cargo volume and one-fourth of the foreign trade volume between China and the U.S.
On Feb. 1 this year, Yantian Port handled its 200 millionth TEU, a new milestone realized in a short eight-year period, increasing from 100 million TEUs. Yantian Port took 18.5 years to achieve its first milestone of accumulatively handling 100 million TEUs in 2013, following its 2007 performance when it became the world’s first container terminal with an annual throughput exceeding 10 million TEUs.
Yantian Port was put into operation in 1994 and it is one of the world’s largest container ports. It has over 100 weekly services to destinations worldwide, covering all major ports in the east and west coasts of the U.S., Europe, Canada and other regions. Among them, more than 60 percent are services for the U.S. and Europe.