Xiaman chases Kaohsiungs tail

APM Terminals holds a 50% stake in the $380m Songyu container terminal in Xiamen, which has three deepwater berths. Xiamen Port Group, parent of Xiamen International Port, owns the remaining shares. Rival liner CMA CGM Group in December signed an agreement with Xiamen City and Hong Kong-based NWS Holdings to develop the Haicang Port Area. The terminal is scheduled for completion in 2009.

A month earlier Cosco Pacific announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Cosco Ports had signed an agreement with Xiamen Haicang Investment General to own a 70% stake in their new $532m joint venture company, Xiamen Yuanhai Container Terminal. The new company will set up and operate a 2.8m teu terminal with four berths in the Haicang district.

Causing further trepidation among the ranks of the Kaohsiung Harbour Bureau, Xiamen, just across the strait, has applied to have a bonded port area. The move would facilitate free trade between Xiamen and Kaohsiung.

With both Xiamen and Fuzhou piling on port capacity at present, Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s top port, is feeling the pinch, sliding out of the top six boxport ranking in 2007. Xiamen has plans to surpass 10m teu as soon as 2011.

While 10m teu is not going to happen anytime soon, one of the big trends in container ports in China over the last 12 months has been the rapid expansion in terminals far inland.

Wuhan is set to become central China’s largest boxport. River port operator CIG Yangtze Ports started an HK$800m ($102.6m) second-phase expansion late last year.

CIG has an 85% stake in the two-berth Phase I of Wuhan International Terminal Port and a 40% stake to develop four berths in Phase II. After the Phase II expansion is completed in 2010, Wuhan International Terminal’s capacity will increase to 1.2m teu.

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

Phase I of the terminal moved 107,384 teu of goods in 2006, an increase of 82% from 59,098 teu in 2005, according to CIG’s annual report. The company is also building a 150m yuan ($21m) dock for heavy and large-sized goods in the Yangluo area. The dock, which is near the first phase dock project of the container relay center of the Hong Kong-listed company, covers an area of 8 hectares and 150 meters long on deep-water front along the Yangtze River. It can handle single large goods as heavy as 600 tonnes as well as general goods.

The project will start construction at the beginning of 2008 and is expected to finish in mid-2009. The investor will introduce quay cranes with maximum carrying capacity of 600 tonnes and flatcars to the dock.

The dock will satisfy the demands of Siemens, Areva and Alstom, three world top-500 machinery suppliers, which signed letters of intent with Wuhan Municipal Government on investing heavy industry manufacturing companies in the Yangluo Development Zone.