Taicang Port pulls in more large cargo vessels

Transport hub creates growth by accommodating larger seagoing shipping firms

Shipping companies are choosing to berth their large container ships in greater numbers at Taicang Port in East China's Jiangsu province, neighboring Shanghai, reinforcing the port's leading position in foreign trade along the Yangtze River.

Statistics from the port show a total of 252 capesize container ships, with lengths from 230 to 270 meters, used Taicang in the first quarter of this year, up 29.8 percent from the same period a year ago.

A policy, first implemented in 2013, has seen Taicang Port - a hub for river cargo - become a major transit center from river to sea for larger seagoing vessels. This has opened up the port and increased its trade.

The port is positioned as a major part of the Shanghai international shipping center and a transit hub linking the Yangtze to the ocean, and is the largest port along the Yangtze for containers, imported iron ore and foreign trade, as well as being China's largest port for imported timber. It ranks the 30th among the world's top 100 container terminals.

The draft of vessels able to use the port has grown six times over the past few years, from 10.3 to 12 meters - every change meaning vessels can carry more cargo.

To put this into perspective, increasing the draft of a capesize container ship by just 1 centimeter means it can be loaded with an additional 145 metric tons of goods. And the berthing of every capsize container ship will bring 130,000 yuan ($19,402) to the dock on average, according to the port.

Accommodating vessels with a draft of 12 meters can increase the freight traffic at Taicang Port by 2 million tons and can save more than 100 million yuan in costs for the shippers annually, an official from Taicang Port said.

According to port statistics, it handled a total of 119,000 vessels last year, representing a year-on-year increase of 12.2 percent, of which ships with a length of at least 250 meters totaled 1,700.

"Taicang Port enjoys several strategic preferential policies and boasts a favorable location in a developed region with booming foreign trade at a critical intersection of the river and the sea," said Li Ping, an official from the management committee of the Taicang Port Economic and Technological Development Zone.

"The port is expected to gain more momentum in the future by providing better services to the local economy and to the ship owners and shippers," said the official.

Taicang Port's administrative committee has signed strategic partnership agreements with several port groups in Shanghai, Ningbo of Zhejiang province and Jiangsu province.

The trans-regional cooperation aims to better serve the advanced manufacturing industry in the Yangtze River Delta by providing more streamlined services in logistics, trade, commerce and more. The bigger and stronger industries will feed the ports in return, said the official.

Currently, more than 80 shipping routes along the Yangtze River are connected to Taicang Port with 50 ports in the economic belt, making it a transit hub for domestic trade.

The near-sea shipping lines operating out of Taicang Port number 25 and connect to 23 ports in the countries and regions along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

As a result, the port is one of the largest for imported aquatic products in East China and a major port for imported fruit in Jiangsu.

Official data show that cargo throughput of Taicang Port rose 6.36 percent year-on-year to 229 million tons last year.

The port handled more than 5 million twenty-foot-equivalent-unit containers in 2018, up 12.4 percent from a year before, ranking first among all the ports in the province and 10th domestically, the figures reveal.

It's projected to raise cargo throughput to 250 million tons and container throughput to 6 million TEUs by the end of 2020, said the local government.