(Economic Observer) "A box is hard to find"? Xiamen cracks port and shipping pain points
China News Service, Xiamen, March 6 (Reporter Yang Fushan) Affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, foreign ports have not been operating smoothly since last year, and a large number of empty containers have been backlogged overseas. This has caused China's domestic ports to become "difficult to find one box" in the short term.
In this regard, Xiamen has expanded its source and tapped its potential internally, and strived to solve the problem of pain points and blockages in port and shipping production.
In an interview with a reporter from China News Agency on the 6th, the person in charge of the Xiamen Port Administration said that the problem of "difficult to find a box" was initially alleviated and gradually produced effects, which strengthened the confidence of foreign trade enterprises in Xiamen to become bigger and stronger.
Statistics show that after the container throughput in January this year increased by 9.63% year-on-year, and after breaking through one million TEUs for eight consecutive months, Xiamen Port set a new historical high in February, with a year-on-year increase of 27.12%.
In the first two months of this year, the port of Xiamen completed a cumulative container throughput of 1.8272 million TEUs, a year-on-year increase of 16.8%, laying a solid foundation for achieving a “good start” in the first quarter.
Wang Wei, senior manager of the operation container management department of Pacific Shipping (China) Co., Ltd. Xiamen Branch, told reporters that since May last year, China's foreign trade exports have increased, and there has been a small-scale tension in containers.
The company’s container inventory in Xiamen began to show continuous tension at the beginning of July last year. At the end of last year, the situation of “difficult to find a box” and “containers waiting for cargo” appeared. The available boxes will not be mentioned until three days before the ship.
As the company increased its efforts to transfer empty containers from abroad, this situation was effectively alleviated at the beginning of this year.
Wang Wei said that at present, Taiping Shipping has no pressure on its container equipment inventory in Fujian, and it can meet the container demand of export customers at any time.
Qiu Zhipeng, deputy general manager of Xiamen Container Terminal Group Co., Ltd. Hairun Wharf, believes that the spread of the overseas epidemic has led to port congestion and difficulties in returning empty containers, which caused the contradiction between international container liner capacity and empty container supply and demand to become increasingly prominent last year.
In the fourth quarter of last year, there was a shortage of containers in ports around the world.
The Xiamen Port Administration immediately set up a dedicated work team to visit Xiamen branches of world-renowned shipping companies and key foreign trade shipping companies to study solutions and coordinate the liner company headquarters to increase the supply of empty containers to Xiamen Port.
As a result, the storage of empty containers at the various terminals of Xiamen Port increased rapidly. Before the Spring Festival, the storage density of empty containers at Songyu Wharf alone reached 74%.
Faced with the new situation of container shortage, Xiamen City has issued support policies for empty container transshipment to encourage shipping companies to expand and strengthen their empty container transshipment business in foreign trade, attracting them to build an empty container transportation center in Xiamen to alleviate the shortage of containers for import and export enterprises .
Xiamen also encourages companies to introduce heart-warming measures to attract employees to stay in Xiamen, so that port and shipping production can be kept on file.
During the Spring Festival this year, all terminals in Xiamen Port were in normal production and operation. Container ships of over 150,000 tons called 20 times, a year-on-year increase of 20%; the named "Silk Road Shipping" route operated 51 times, and completed 6.25 container throughput. Ten thousand standard containers, an increase of 110% year-on-year, effectively guaranteed the return of empty containers.
Xiamen City also supports port and shipping companies to increase their efforts to repair abandoned and worn-out containers and reuse them to the utmost extent; introduce port and shipping production incentive policies to guide terminals and shipping companies to increase their order of empty containers, and promote container manufacturing companies to use full capacity and expand production. Increase the supply of empty containers.
According to Xiamen Container Terminal Group Co., Ltd., as of February 18 this year, the top ten foreign trade shipping companies in Xiamen, such as Maersk, COSCO Shipping, Mediterranean, CMA CGM, and Evergreen, have reached 94,000 TEUs in the port. 51,000 TEUs of cargo containers are unloaded.
This effectively alleviates the tight situation of the import and export container volume of Xiamen Port, and provides strong support for the smooth flow of international logistics channels and the promotion of domestic and international double circulation.
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