China’s state-owned logistics service provider Sinotrans Group and China Yangtze Transportation Group are talking about a merger and related reorganization.

The merger, if it proceeds, would create the second largest shipping logistics firm by assets in China after Cosco Group.

Sinotrans is trying to group its container shipping businesses under its flagship Sinotrans Container Lines.

Yangtze Transportation Group, one of China’s largest river-shipping operators, had a fleet of about 2,800 vessels and net assets of RMB41.2 billion at the end of 2007.

The company, also known as China Changjiang National Shipping, has 19 units located along the Yangtze River as well as two China-listed units, Chang Jiang Shipping Group Phoenix and Nanjing Tanker.

Yangtze Transportation Group also has a shipbuilding unit that exports ships to the U.S. and Europe.
Sources: SteelGuru and the Wall Street Journal.

David Lammie at Yangtze Business Services provides news of their updated report on Yangtze river ports.

Yangtze container volume increased 38% in 2007 as domestic trade surged. There has been huge spending on transport networks to open up the interior to more inward investment

Container traffic volumes on the Yangtze River surged to a record high of 5.54 million teu — units — in 2007, an increase of 38% over the previous year.

Figures from the Yangtze River Administration under China’s Ministry of Transport show that cargo throughput of the major ports along the Yangtze trunk line stood at 918 million tons, up 16.6% from the previous year.

The report continues: ‘Despite these upward trends, however, the river is a heavily underutilised transport resource. Traffic remains heavily concentrated in the lower reaches where the shipping conditions are better, the local economies are more dynamic and access to the sea is easier. Cargo throughput in the Jiangsu ports up to Nanjing, located just 300km from the sea, accounted for two-thirds of the Yangtze’s total in 2007.

‘By summer 2009 when the Three Gorges Dam is completed, Beijing planners will have realised their ambition of creating an all-year-round shipping channel to allow 10,000 dwt barge fleets to sail from Chongqing to Shanghai — a distance of some 2,500 km — within no more than seven days.

‘Huge sums of money are also being spent to build a Riverside Expressway, a Riverside Highway and a Riverside Railway, all running parallel to the Yangtze and due to open in the next few years. The Riverside Expressway, which will be completed by the end of 2010, will reduce the journey time by car between the two municipalities to around 24 hours.’

Much, much more from Yangtze Transport 2008 which bilingual report was first published in 2006. The second edition, completely updated and revised, is now available. More by clicking HERE.
Source: China Business Services

Shanghai port has implemented new strategies focusing on the Yangtze River, Northeast Asia and global operations to reinforce its position as an international shipping center and ease it ahead of the others. It wants to move this forward and develop into a major maritime hub in Asia such as Singapore and Hong Kong which is ould like very much, please, to surpass.

Lu Haihu, chairman of Shanghai International Port Group, said, ‘The Yangtze River strategy involves cooperation and strategic alliances along the Yangtze River, improvement of container handling service levels at Shanghai port as well as at inland ports.’

The strategy involves using management skills, capital and technology to strengthen the cargo consolidation network and develop hinterland cargo sources to serve the Yangtze River Delta.

The idea seems to be that getting the feeder ports — Chongqing, Wuhan and Nanjing — up to speed and the rest of the Yangtze Delta upgraded then, it follows, Shanghai will automatically benefit.

As part of what is called the Golden Waterway Strategy — oh! Splendid name — Shanghai port will also promote upgrading of vessels and standards and the improvement of navigational and shipping capacity. The end game being a regional feeder cargo network with Shanghai as its nucleus.

Shanghai port will focus on the area’s container and cargo flow, particularly transhipment containers that go through Yangshan deep-water port.

Shanghai port expects to maintain a sustained, healthy and fairly rapid growth of its container-related businesses.

Analyst C K Wong said Shanghai port’s combined container throughput at Waigaoqiao and Yangshan terminals, is expected to exceed Singapore port’s container throughput this year and make it the busiest container port in the world.

Last year, Shanghai ports handled 26.2 million TEUs, representing a 20% growth over 2006, making it the world’s second busiest container port after Singapore. Hong Kong was pushed into third position. Singapore port registered a throughput of 27.94 million TEUs in 2007.
Source: CargoNews Asia

China’s seas contributed RMB2.49 trillion ($347 billion), or 10%, of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) last year.

A report, issued by the State Oceanic Administration (SOA), said the value of marine industries, including fishing, transport, oil and gas, tourism and shipbuilding, grew 15% year on year, more than the economy as a whole.

The marine industry employed 31.5 million people last year, 1.9 million more than in 2006.

SOA spokesman Li Haiqing said the main pillars of the rapid growth were the traditional industries of transport, tourism and fishing, which accounted for more than 80% of total output value.

Emerging industries also grew quickly. For example, the oceanic biological pharmaceutical industry, which generated more than RMB4 billion last year, was up more than 37%.

With the launch in November of the first offshore wind power station, funded and run by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, the sector generated RMB500 million, up 17% year on year.

The gross production value in the Bohai Bay Rim Area was more than RMB954 billion, accounting for 38% of total output of the marine sector. Similarly, the gross production of the Yangtze River Delta region amounted to about RMB775 billion, or about 31% of the total output.
Source: English East Day

Chongqing Gangjiu, an inland river shipping company, will inject $12.2 million into its subsidiary which is Chongqing International Container. This additional investment will boost the registered capital of the container terminal company to $52.1 million.

The container terminal company, which is on the north bank of the Yangtze River in Chongqing, was constructed in two phases:

The first phase covering 57 hectares was put into operation at the end of 2005. It covered 950 m of riverbank, had two 3,000-tonnage container berths and one roll-on/roll-off berth. Its annual capacity is 280,000 containers (TEU) and 150,000 cars.

The second phase, with a total investment of $163 million, started in September.

This will have three 3,000-tonnage container berths and one roll-on/roll-off berth. When it is finished in 2011 it will boost the company’s total capacity to 700,000 TEUs and 300,000 cars.
Source: CargoNews Asia

The Port of Wuhan, where the Yangtze River joins the lesser Han River, will be built into the largest freshwater shipping center in Central China. It is estimated that it will take five to 15 years.

Wuhan Port will have an annual throughput of over 100 million tonnes. The major cargo sources for the port are containers, metal ore, iron and steel, petrochemicals and vehicles.

The port, which has a 236.7 km bank-line along the Yangtze River and 112.9 km line along the Han River, will have 23 port areas as its long-term goal. Its cargo throughput will reach 100 million tonnes in 2010 and 168 million tonnes in 2020 if all goes as planned.

It will be set up with different areas specializes in different types of cargo. Within the overall area the Yangluo Port Area will focus on container operation, Qingshan Port Area on petrochemicals, Jinkou Port Area on general goods, Beihu Port Area on steel products.
Source: CargoNews Asia

River port operator CIG Yangtze Ports plans to embark on a $100 million second-phase expansion in central China by the end of this year.

Chairman Edward Chow Kong-fai said after the annual general meeting held in Hong Kong that CIG has an 85% stake in the two-berth Phase I of Wuhan International Terminal Port and is planning to take a 40% stake and develop four berths in Phase II.

The company, spun off from Chow’s China Infrastructure Group, has signed a binding agreement with Wuhan’s provincial government and hopes to obtain approval by the end of this year. After the Phase II expansion is completed in 2010, Wuhan International Terminal’s capacity will increase to 1.2 million TEUs (20-ft equivalent units).

It will be the largest port in western and central China, and will account for 80% of Wuhan’s total throughput.

According to CIG’s annual report Phase I of the terminal moved 107,384 TEUs of goods in 2006, an increase of 82% from 59,098 TEUs in 2005.

Edward Chow Kong-fai said Hong Kong was charging a fee of $200 per TEU compared with Shenzhen, which charges RMB1,000 yuan ($131, and Shanghai, which charges RMB600 ($79.)

He added, ‘Wuhan International Terminal charges less than China’s average of RMB425 ($56) per TEU, so there is still room to increase terminal charges.’

Terminal charges accounted for 75% of the company’s total revenue in 2006, while logistics business accounted for 15%.
Source: The Standard

The Yangtze — China’s longest, most important river — is playing an increasingly vital role in providing energy and raw material imports. The growth has attracted the attention of transport and logistics companies.

Some facts. (It would be possible to write ’staggering’ facts but that would be pointless hyperbole. Almost all facts about China are staggering.)

China accounts for a quarter of the world’s handling of containerized goods.
The seven provinces along the Yangtze’s 2,700km navigable length are home to 400m people and account for 40% of China’s gross domestic product and 60% of GDP growth.
Container volumes from the river’s ports to Shanghai are currently growing 35% year on year.

River traffic’s slow speed matters less for bulk commodities than for valuable container-borne goods. Bulk commodities are also harder to shift by China’s rapidly improving road network. Not all the growth is in bulk or on the lower river, however. Ford cars come by barge nearly 2,500km from a factory in Chongqing to be exported by sea from Shanghai.

Owen Xie, general manager for auto logistics in China of Japan’s NYK Logistics, said, ‘A truck’s maximum load is eight cars. When you take the barge, the maximum load is nearly 200.’ Which is shown in our illustration where a worker guides a truck on to a barge.
Source: Management +Karriere

The China Changjiang Ship Management Bureau uses GraphOn’s GO-Global software for remote, Web-enabled access to the Windows-based Kingdee K/3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) application.

The China Changjiang Ship Management Bureau is the government department that manages shipping on China’s busy Yangtze river, also known as the Changjiang.

Johnman Chang, VP of Sales for Kouton Technology, GraphOn’s distributor in China, said, ‘The bureau needed a simple, low-cost solution that would allow them to run Kingdee K/3 on their central servers and then access the application from remote locations using a standard Web browser.’

GO-Global allows access to Windows, UNIX and Linux applications from any authorized location, platform and OS. Users access the application via a standard Web browser or a native thin client. (That is a bit of IT speak. A thin client is not someone who is not eating his rice every day. It is a small computer being used as a terminal.)

The Yangtze is one of the world’s busiest waterways for international shipping and plays an increasingly crucial role in China’s economic growth.
Source: Business Wire

It took thirteen years to construct, rises to five levels and is a dual-track ship lock for the Three Gorges Dam. The Three Gorges Dam is a Chinese hydroelectric river dam which spans the Yangtze River in Sandouping, Yichang, Hubei province, China.

As of 2007, it is the largest hydroelectric river dam in the world, more than five times the size of the Hoover Dam.

The reservoir began filling on June 1, 2003, and will occupy part of the scenic Three Gorges area, between the cities of Yichang, Hubei; and Fuling, Chongqing.

The ship lock for navigating the dam is the largest of its kind in the world and is an amazing piece of construction.

Zhang Guangdou, an academician on both the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering, said, ‘The permanent ship lock demands the most sophisticated technology in the entire Three Gorges project. Tests have shown the lock would ensure safe navigation for ships when the water level behind the dam rises from 156 to 175 meters. This means the two-way traffic can resume on May 1, two months ahead of schedule.’

Niu Xinqiang, vice director of the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee, said, ‘The engineering, metal structures, machinery and electronic equipment of the lifting facility for the 113-meter drop between the upstream and downstream have reached international standards.’

The installation of ship locks is intended to increase river shipping from 10 million to 50 million tonnes annually, with transportation costs cut by 30 to 37%. Shipping will become safer, since the gorges are notoriously dangerous to navigate. Each ship lock is made up of 5 stages taking around 4 hours in total to complete.

The canal locks are designed to be 280 m long, 35 m wide, and 5 m deep (918 x 114 x 16.4 ft). That is 30 m longer than those on the St Lawrence Seaway, but half as deep. The canal locks are designed to handle 10,000 ton barges. The lock,6.4 km long and costing RMB6.2 billion($775 million), started to be built into mountainous terrain on the northern bank of the Yangtze in 1994.

The four-level operation began in 2004. The lock has been restricted to one-way traffic, alternating every 24 hours, since September last year when work began to raise the beds of the two uppermost tiers of the lock from 131 to 139 meters.

The operation began on the southern route, which reopened on January 20, and work on the northern track started the same day. The Three Gorges Project is located on the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, China’s longest and one of the country’s most important inland waterways. All of which is totally amazing.
Source: China View