Archive for October, 2007

Mainland port operator China Merchants Holdings plans to develop a multi-purpose port at Ma Wan port zone in western Shenzhen. The company said the first of five berths will be built at a cost of $92.9 million.

The port operator also runs terminals in Shekou and Chiwan. In the first half of the year, its ports in western Shenzhen handled 4.98 million TEU where a TEU is a standard sized container.

Talking of the future the president of the company Fu Yuning did not rule out the possibility of acquiring overseas ports jointly with Shanghai International Port, in which it has a 26.5% stake.

In April, China Merchants Group, parent of the Hong Kong-listed unit, joined with Vietnam National Shipping Lines to build and operate Ben Ding Sao Mai Seaport and ancillary projects. The project was the firm’s first investment outside China.
Source: CargoNews Asia

The vice-President of the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing, Dai Dingyi, seen here, said China will hold an International Logistics Enterprises Cooperation Summit next year in Beijing. It will run from January 10 to 11.

The forum will include a series of meetings on the topic of ‘opportunity and value: the opening up of the Chinese logistics market.’

The meetings will include subjects such as investment strategies and merger and acquisitions amongst Chinese logistics enterprises, the development of logistics information and standardization, and the development of manufacture logistics and outsourcing services.

Dai Dingyi said the Chinese logistics industry has begun a new development stage. International logistics enterprises and strategic investors are showing more interest that they had shown in the Chinese market since the logistics industry opened in 2005.
Source: China Daily

China Shipping Group and a Chinese company for containerized cargo transportation by rail have opened an international container service between Lianyungang, the port city in Jiangsu, and Moscow.

Every train which provides the transboundary cargo transportation has 48 cars and can deliver 98 containers. En-route time is 25 days quicker than the transportation by sea and 10 days quicker than by the Trans-Siberian Railway. The cargo goes from China’s port of Lianyungang via Almaty to Moscow. We will hear much more of this.
Source: CargoNews Asia

Overgrown and disused for much of the last 60 years, a ghost road, known as the Stillwell Road, that connects India to China via Burma, will soon reappear on maps of the region. The construction of the road claimed the lives of 1,100 US servicemen and many more local laborers during the second world war. But it helped bust a three-year Japanese land and sea blockade of China and hastened the end of the war. (There was a movie made of it, The Stillwell Road, narrated by Ronald Reagan.)

Reopening has been discussed for years. But as recently as 2004 it was reported: Despite their pleas, India and Burma have made it clear that they are not willing to meet the demand to have the road reopened any time. Militant groups dominate a huge area of the road, and leaders from India and Burma believe that if the road were opened, it would help the insurgent groups to carry forward their subversive activities in the region.

Now India and China are restoring the historic highway.

China has already converted its own 680km stretch into a six-lane highway and is helping to rebuild much of the road inside Burma. India is further behind, expecting to complete the transformation of a single-lane track ridden with pot-holes into a two-lane highway by March.
Source: Financial Times

The latest version of bullet train in China will probably be launched this year. The body of the first Chinese designed and manufactured high-speed train has already rolled off the production line which means that it is keeping to schedule. The train is the latest model in the country’s China Railway High-speed (CRH) Series and China’s first locomotive capable of traveling at 300 kilometers per hour.

Slower CRH series — able to travel at 200 kilometers per hour — are already in service.

The company will deliver ten of the new trains to the Ministry of Railways in the first half of next year.

The trains, which can seat about 600 passengers, will run on the 115-km Beijing-Tianjin route before the Beijing Olympic Games in August 2008. They will reduce the journey time from the current 80 minutes to around half an hour.

Source: People’s Daily Online

China-India two way trade is set to reach $20 billion by 2008. Which is probably why Mumbai-based Direct Logistics India, a company that facilitates exports and imports by sea and air, has acquired a Chinese logistics company, Shenzhen Dida Logistics.

This is the first-ever acquisition by an Indian company in the Chinese freight forwarding industry.

Direct Logistics, which is in the process of setting up its own office in China, is currently into warehouse-to-warehouse international transportation and marine insurance, apart from cargo in and out from the ­country.

Mark Fernandes, chairman of Shipping and Aviation committee of Indian Merchants’ Chamber and former president of Bombay Customs House Agents’ Association said, ‘The reverse trend of Indian companies acquiring international companies has started, though it was overdue. Indian logistics companies need to strengthen their global presence for effective network of cargo transportation. Acquisitions will add value to Indian companies.’

The two-way trade, China-India, which was $18.7 billion in 2005 is growing at an average annual rate of 32%.

Line 5 has opened to the public, linking Beijing’s largest low-cost housing area in the north (Tiantongyuan precinct) to suburban areas in the south (Songjiazhuang precinct). It has, indeed, changed peoples’ lives, and for the better.

The Economic Observer has a story of Wang and An Jing which suggests their marriage was saved by the new line. Not only that but the story mirror tens of thousands of others in Beijing. Read the full story by clicking on Source below.

The city has grown so large that kin living at different ends of the city hardly find time to meet up. Now, the network of subway lines offers some hope for better communication.

Subway fares at a flat rate of RMB2 appear to have propped up the ‘Happiness Index’ of the city residents although, on the downside, prices of properties along the subway lines have skyrocketed.

I Love My Home — the correct an splendid name — real estate agency organized large scale viewing tours. Based on the agency’s records, second hand properties along Line 5 in Fangzhuang, Liujiayao, Hepingli and Lishuiqiao made up 28% of its total sales.
Source: Economic Observer Online

Shanghai ports had $378.17 billion in foreign trade in the first three quarters of this year.

That is up 20.9% on the same period of last year.

The total included $238.5 billion in export value, up 22.8%, and $139.68 billion dollars in import value, up 17.8%. September was the big month with figures reaching $17.63 billion dollars in September, up 15% year-on-year.

The two major trade partners between January and September were, unusually enough, the Republic of Korea and the European Union.

In the nine months bilateral trade between Shanghai and the European Union ports amounted to $81.88 billion, or 21.7% of Shanghai’s total external trade volume, up 30.2%. The growth rate was 9.3 percentage points higher than the year-earlier level.

According to the local customs sources, foreign-funded businesses made up for 74% of the external trade through Shanghai ports in the first three quarters, with a volume of $240.81 billion, up 20.7%.
Source: People’s Daily Online

The handling capacity of the second largest port in northeast China, Yingkou Port has broken the 100 million-ton record. Which means there are currently ten 100 million-ton ports in China.

The other nine 100 million-ton ports are in Shanghai, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Qinhuangdao, Dalian, and Rizhao.

This is still some way behind the United States which appears to have 51 of them. The United States are measured in short tons. There are two measurements (more when you add metric) : the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds, and the short ton which is 2,000 pounds.

Thus we are only talking about a potential difference of 25%. Which would, worse, case, bring the US figure down to, say, 38 ports. Still some considerable way ahead of China.

Booming world trade and demand from China is forcing up the price of shipping rates. Which is probably good news for the air freight companies where the pressures appear to be the other way around.

Over the past few years cargo volumes have exceeded the capacity of vessels available by about 10% a year. Added to that there has been the ongoing rise in fuel prices.

Glenn Delve, commercial director of Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), said that price increases over the past year had been between 15% and 20%, but this depended on the type of cargo, the trade route and the client. It is China, where the economy is growing by about 15% a year, which is adding to the problem.

New ships are being built as fast as possible and Glenn Delve thinks the shortage could be eased within the next six months to a year.
Source: The Times South Africa