Belt and Road Initiative to boost production capacity of Wuhan Yangluo Port

Yangluo Port in central China's Wuhan 

With the Belt and Road Initiative gaining wider support and reach, Wuhan Yangluo Port has expressed optimism that its production capacity will hit 500,000 TEUs in 2017.

"Since the Belt and Road Initiative was implemented three years ago, our production capacity has increased and so we are expecting it to hit 500,000 TEUs or containers this year," Zhang Song, operation manager of Wuhan International Container Co. Ltd., told Asian journalist during a recent report tour in Wuhan.

Zhang said Yanglou Port will benefit a lot from the Belt and Road Initiative, an economic integration platform that has gained much attention worldwide since it was proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013.

Located in 180,000-square meter land area, Yangluo is the largest wharf of Wuhan New Port which has a total area of 13,745 square kilometer, extending 862 km in length along the Yangtze River and 113 km along the Hanjing River.

Wuhan New Port (WNP) was established in 2008 to coordinate the construction, development and management of ports.

Since it is located along Yangtze River, WNP is expected to play significant role in Maritime Silk Road trades between Chinese inland provinces and neighboring countries particularly from Southeast Asian region.

The WNP covers 30 zones in five cities of Wuhan, Huanggang, Ezhou, Xianning and Huangshi with an ambitious target of increasing its handling capacity to 500 million tons a year by 2025.

Last year, Zhang said Yangluo Port loaded and downloaded 415,000 TEUs or 5,000 higher compared to 2015’s figure.

He said the wharf of Yangluo Port is equipped with inspection and quarantine machine which can detect illegal goods like prohibited drugs inside the container.

"I think that’s one of our main advantage. We need this kind of equipment because our port can accommodate 10,000 loaded and 15,000 empty containers," he said.

In 2014, WNP became the first inland port in the upper and middle streams of Yangtze River to have handled more than one million TEUs.

Over RMB26 billion (US$3.7 billion) was allocated in 2015 to increase the WNP’s production berths to 692 that can accommodate over 1,700 kinds of vessels with berthing capacity to 10,000 tons.

At present, the vessels with berthing capacity of 4,000 tons are using Yangtze river to transport cargoes from WNP to Shanghai Yangshan Harbor where the containers are transferred to international ocean liners.

Zhang said ships with berthing capacity of more than 10,000 tons can use WNP once the waterway dredging project along Yangtze river is completed by 2020.

He said WNP has great advantage since it is located along the middle and upper reaches of Yangtze river in the central region of China.

Jelly Musico is a reporter of Philippines News Agency and an Intern of People’s Daily Online