Page 34 - Sphere No.19 (Jun 2007)

32 SPHERE
From backwater
to boom town
T H E N . . . A N D N O W
IF YOU WANTED to identify a place that epitomises the ex-
port-led economic success story that has taken place in
southern China, look no further than Yantian. This booming
port town, situated just east of Hong Kong, provides importers
and exporters with a convenient trading gateway and satisfies
the ever-increasing needs of shipping lines and shippers.
Then... Back in the early 1990s, Yantian was a quiet coastal
backwater of Shenzhen with few commercial prospects. That all
changed with the creation of Yantian International Container
Terminals Limited (YICT), a joint venture between Hutchison
Port Holdings and the Shenzhen Yantian Port Group. The first
ocean-going ship called at YICT on 20 July 1994, marking the
start of an extraordinary period of growth that has seen Yan-
tian Port become a world-class facility.
Now... Today, YICT operates and manages Phases I, II and
III at Yantian and has 12 deep-water berths servicing 36 leading
shipping lines. Looking ahead, the YICT Expansion Project will
add a further six container berths by 2010.
But it is the numbers that tell the real story. In 2006, YICT
handled 8,865,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), helping
to make Shenzhen the fourth largest deepwater container ter-
minal in the world. In 1994, the figure was just 13,000!