The grand opening of a giant food-import center in the Southern China city of Zhuhai could be a boon to U.S. food sales in China.

The 74,300 square meter facility includes cold storage and freezer storage, 1,300 square meters of display space and laboratories to test for food safety. The facility, called a logistics center, is in an economic zone, which allows shippers to store products there without being taxed. Products aren’t taxed until they are moved out of the zone.

Oregon Department of Agriculture Director Katy Coba, said, ‘We’ve got to ship container loads (to amortize the cost of shipping product to China. But in China, it’s a rarity that someone wants to purchase a whole container load. This facility addresses that, because you can ship a container, store it there and then buyers can come in and buy less than full container loads of product.’ (The illustration is of shops in Zhuhai City.)
Source: Capital Press

More logistic projects are being built for the Yangshan Bonded Port Area in the Port of Shanghai.

The construction of the logistics warehouse project of Shanghai China Shipping began in late May 2008. The project covers 13.13 hectares with a total investment of RMB180 million. It will be built into a multi-functional concentration and distribution center for containers and cargo.

Apart from CSCL, the bonded area is attracting other large logistics firms to do businesses there. Over 50 Chinese and foreign companies in logistics, processing and commerce and trade service sectors such as A.P. Moller-Maersk and CMA CGM have set up logistics supply chain in the area.

The bonded area gives investment priority to those firms whose parents are World Top 500 companies and have engaged in logistics industry for at least ten years and can invest RMB1.5 million in every mu (1mu=667 square meters) with 30% of the registered capital from its own capital.
Source: Trading Markets

Xiamen, coastal city of Southeast China’s Fujian Province, and seen shimmering in our illustration, has been approved to build the country’s seventh bonded port area.

The bonded port area will cover 9.45 sq km, including three sections, which will be connected by an elevated road.

One section contains the Songyu Port area, the No. 1 to No. 8 berths of the Haicang Port area and the existing storage logistics park.
Another section is the existing export processing zone in the Haicang Port area.
The third section is the No. 14 to No. 19 berths of the Haicang Port Area.

The bonded area will deal in container loading and unloading, international cargo transit, international distribution and delivery, international purchase, international transit trade and export processing and shipping-related supporting services.
Source: CargoNews Asia

Agility, which was formerly PWC Logistics, and is effectively a world-wide company, has signed a conditional agreement to acquire Cosa Freight. The deal is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks.

Cosa Freight is a full service ocean freight forwarder with 200 employees in six China-based locations, and it also has offices in Hong Kong, the United States, and Canada. The illustration shows part of its attractively designed bonded warehouse.

Agility said in a statement it has a full range of services for the retail sector, including origin consolidation and upstream inventory management programs in China and warehousing, trans-loading, and delivery in the U.S.

Agility added that this acquisition will further strengthen Agility’s network capability in China and increase the range of services in major trading and manufacturing centers throughout China.

Agility Vice President of Marketing Jerry Levy said, ‘On the origin cargo management side, one of the things Cosa Freight brings to Agility is their strength in China. We think this acquisition is a natural fit and will put us in a very strengthened competitive position in North America, as we are now going to be able to offer origin cargo services in more areas of China.’
Source: Logistics Management

Maersk line, the world’s largest container shipping company, has transferred its foreign container business in the Qingzhou Terminal at the Mawei Port Area of the Port of Fuzhou, Southeast China, to the Jiangyin Port Area.

The Jiangyin Port Area, with deeper water than the Qingzhou Terminal, has a processing area for exported products, 283,000 sq m of logistics yard, a dedicated passenger line between Jiangyin and Fuzhou and 25 hectares of container yard at the 100,000-tonnage No. 3 and No. 2 container berths.

To adds to this there will be a bonded logistics area and other supporting facilities such as gas station and bank offices.

Maersk line expects to handle 100,000 containers in the Jiangyin Port Area this year.

This is part of an overall expansion in shipping routes and a drive to promote more cargo sources.
Source: CargoNews Asia

There will be a special export zone in the southern island province of Hainan. The Yangpu Bonded Port Area will enjoy tax breaks and other preferential policies similar to three zones in Shanghai, Tianjin and Dalian according to Shanghai Securities News.

Vice province governor Jiang Sixian said at a press conference that the port is expected to become a logistics hub as well as an export center for petrochemicals.

He said, ‘It’s conducive to faster economic growth of Hainan and the whole region.’

The Yangpu Port will be built up in three phases with the first phase already started and will eventually cover an area of 9.2 square kilometers with an annual throughput of 70 million tonnes

The first phase of construction had already started, said Jiang Sixian.

RMB50 billion will be spent on construction and the area will host industries with a total output value of RMB100 billion, generating RMB12 billion in taxes annually by 2012.

Yangpu bonded harbor area borders the ASEAN trading zone, is close to key international shipping routes, and has a deep-water shoreline of more than 50 km where 80 berths with dead-weight-tonnages of up to 300,000 tons can be built.
It will be the closest industrial base to the oil and gas resources in the South China Sea.

Our illustration shows shows a 300,000 ton-class oil tanker anchored at Yangpu Port in south China’s Hainan Province.

China’s first African logistics terminal, which is seen as an important development in Sino-Africa trade relations, has opened in Tianjin, seen here, north China’s biggest port city.

The Tianjin Port GMT Africa International Logistics Terminal, located in the Tianjin Port Free Trade Zone, covers an area of 60,000 square meters including a 5,500-square-meter warehouse.

The terminal will deal with Sino-Africa imports and exports.

Trade between China and Africa has witnessed rapid development in recent years. Statistics show Sino-Africa trade volume brought in $55.5 billion in 2006, up 40% over the same period of 2005.

Sino-African trade volume through Tianjin port reached 3.36 million tons in 2006, up 63.3%.
Source: China View

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, seen in our illustration, said in Dalian that the aim is to make Dalian not only a major harbor along China’s northeast coast but also a shipping center of Northeast Asia.

He said that all projects under construction should be carefully designed and planned and lead the way in the region. The premier urged the city to take a scientific approach to development and balance the economic development with environmental protection to turn Dalian into a well-developed, harmonious and ecologically beautiful city.

He had just attended the Summer Davos meeting in Dalian and said, ‘Good environment is one of the reasons why Summer Davos was held here. Some 1,000 foreign participants could not only visit local enterprises but also enjoy the blue sky with white clouds and experience Dalian’s efforts in energy-saving and sustainable development.’

While in Dalian, the premier visited Datyaowan bonded zone and the new harbor under construction.
Source: China Daily

An informational session was hosted at Schneider National headquarters in the United States with representatives from the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area (TEDA) in northern China.

While the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area has drawn investment from big companies like John Deere, Motorola and Coca-Cola, it is also seeking mid-sized and small businesses for investment in China.

Zhong Qiang Yang, vice president of the TEDA Administrative Commission, said through a translator, ‘There’s a huge potential market in China in terms of the biggest population in the world. In the TEDA, the average investment return rate is about 10%. It is not achieved though cheap labor costs; it is achieved because of the size of the market you’re gaining.’

Zhong Qiang Yang said, ‘For the medium- and small-sized businesses, there are two scenarios: They can follow the bigger players, such as Motorola who attract small-sized companies which can be their customers or their suppliers.

‘Another type of small- and medium-sized enterprise are the pioneers, they can see the potential market opportunity in China, so they invest and some of them grow pretty fast.’

He said they have set up their system to provide technical and market support along with grants for high-tech industry to firms interested in moving to the region.

Schneider first went to China in the fall of 2005 to provide transportation and logistics consulting. Earlier this year, the company was granted authority to operate as a domestic carrier and logistics services provider in the country.

Schneider — which has a logistics office in the Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area — has been working toward the acquisition of a trucking company in China.
Source: Green Bay Gazette

The reclamation at Tianjin’s Dongjiang port is for a land belt 10km long and 3km wide forthe construction of berths.

According to Yu Rumin, general manager of the Tianjin Port Group’s Customs and quarantine facilities the first batch of six container berths with a draught of 18m will be completed at Dongjiang, will be completed by the end of 2007. As will the first phase of the logistic processing zone, covering four sq km.

The six berths, run by a joint venture of Tianjin Port and PSA of Singapore and costing 871.5 million, will have a capacity of four million TEUs a year.

The current bonded port and zone will become the Dongjiang Free Port and the Tianjin Free Trade Zone, according to a blueprint drawn up by the Tianjin municipal authority. Together with Tianjin Port, the area will be the core of the Binhai New Area, identical to the Pudong New Area in Shanghai.

Yu Rumin said, ‘The Dongjiang Free Port will be a pioneer project for China in supply chain management.’

The bonded zone’s director, Feng Zhijiang, said the zone would consolidate its role as an international supply chain centre and serve Northeast Asia. A trade and financial centre will be built at the zone to facilitate exports and imports for central and western China. The zone will also comprise an aviation industrial park, an airport bonded zone, and a free-trade logistics park.
Source: Cargonews Asia