Ningbo Zhoushan Port Ranks Top Globally for 14 Consecutive Years!
Meishan Port Area of Ningbo Zhoushan Port. (Photo by Wang Shuting)
Ningbo Zhoushan Port in Zhejiang province of East China saw its cargo throughput exceed 1.25 billion tons in 2022, ranking top globally for a fourteenth consecutive year. The port's container throughput also hit 33.35 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), ranking third in the world.
Against the backdrop of domestic and international complexities and volatility in 2022, Ningbo Zhoushan Port has rolled out 18 measures to ensure unblocked service and operation and 46 specific moves to improve quality and overcome difficulties. Its business environment and effective logistics have been further improved, helping to realize the port’s goal of steady growth.
Statistics show that the total value of China's foreign trade in goods registered 42.07 trillion yuan in 2022, up 7.7% year-on-year. Ningbo-Zhoushan Port's steady growth attests to China's resilient economy.
Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, as an important hub of the trade network, has endeavored to strengthen its strategic position in domestic and global circulation, promoting cooperation with shipping enterprises and optimizing route design. A resulting breakthrough has been made in container routes, whose totality currently reaches 300(13 new international routes were newly developed in 2022). 120 of these routes are under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The steady and progressive performance of China's busiest port benefits from its proactive internal and external expansion. 2022 has witnessed numerous uncertainties, particularly in serious global imbalance between energy supply and demand and constant fluctuation in the commodity market worldwide. Ningbo Zhoushan Port strived to tackle such challenges as declining demand for iron ore and periodical imbalance of AOG (arrival of goods), by competing for market share with good services. Against the downturn trend worldwide, it succeeded in unloading a total of 64 ore vessels (with 400,000 tonnages), up 10.35% year-on-year.
Ningbo Zhoushan Port remains sensitive and watchful to any adjustments of crude oil policies and market changes, strengthening communication with major customers and refineries, expediting its operations and rolling out plans scientifically. It has launched “excellent service packages” to save costs for customers, and tapped into the advantages of effectively coordinated crude oil terminal clusters to improve the efficiency and capacity of handling.
In 2022, the port continued to expand the roll-on / roll-off services of automobiles for domestic and foreign trade (annual workload: 460,000 cars, a year-on-year growth of 26.4%) in response to booming automobile production and sales. Among them, the volume for foreign trade has increased dramatically.
In addition, a steady growth in businesses concerning the coal, liquefied oil product, and grain sectors has been maintained at Ningbo Zhoushan Port in 2022.
此外,2022年,宁波舟山港煤炭、液化油品、粮食业务均保持稳定增长。
The steady and progressive performance of the port also benefits from its constant pursuit of "first-class" in capacity building. In 2022, Ningbo Zhoushan Port concentrated on building up "first-class equipment, technologies, management, and services". By strictly following timelines and firmly tightening safety standards, it has sped up construction on a series of municipal, provincial and national key projects. The main works of the Ningbo Zhoushan Port Key Infrastructure Project have been initiated; the construction of deep-water port areas in Chuanshan, Meishan, and Daxie has been accelerated. Zhongzhai Ore Terminal (Phase II) – the largest on this site with an operation capacity of 300,000 tonnages – was put into full operation and has unloaded 45 ore ships. In Meishan Port Area the container-berth cluster of ten-million-TEUs-class started to take shape, with an annual container throughput exceeding 8 million for the first time. All these show that the throughput capacity of Ningbo Zhoushan Port has reached a new level.
Digital transformation and smart port construction has been under collaborative advancement at China's busiest port. Rapid and steady progress can be found in a number of its "2+1" smart terminal demonstration projects, such as Meishan Port Area's intelligent container terminal, Shulang Lake's intelligent bulk cargo terminal and Ningbo-Zhoushan Smart Terminal. Each of these innovations will elevate the scientific and technological achievements of Ningbo Zhoushan Port to new heights.