In 2017, it is a year of turbulent but bright highlights for the port industry in our country: a record throughput, the opening of the fourth phase of the Shanghai Yangshan Deepwater Port, the continuous advancement of port services, the consolidation of the ports and so on.

    Looking back on 2017, the port industry has many bright spots, including a number of "records".

    Zhoushan Port: Throughput recorded. According to the port cargo throughput data released by the Ministry of Transport recently, Ningbo Zhoushan Port, which had 933 million mt of cargo throughput in the first 11 months, is likely to break the 1 billion mt mark by the end of the year.

    Shanghai Port: This year, the container throughput of Shanghai Port will exceed 40 million TEUs at the end of the year, which not only means that Shanghai Port has further consolidated its position as the world's largest container port, but also represents the rapid development of China's ports.

    Xiamen Port: In the meantime, Xiamen Port will also be included in 10 million TEUs ports this year, bringing the total number of TEUs ports in Mainland China to seven.

    Yangshan Port: Taking Yangshan Port Phase IV (Yangshan fourth phase) container terminal automation as the representative of the incident, 2017 is coming to an end, it greatly inspired the ports industry. First, it is an excellent showcase of "Made in China"; second it is the anticipation of a more prosperous global trade market to a large extent, so that the port dared to increase its own production capacity.

    Qingdao Port: On December 3rd, Qingdao Port putting into operation for only 7 months achieved a global operating record of 39.6 natural bales per hour, surpassing that of artificial wharf.

    From the growth rate of view, in the first 11 months, above-scale port cargo throughput and container throughput growth rates were 7% and 8.7% respectively. No matter the cargo throughput or the container throughput, only one port of above-scale ports in Mainland China experienced negative growth respectively, namely the cargo throughput of Tianjin Port and the container throughput of Dandong Port.

    On May 22nd, the long-awaited Jiangsu Port Group was set up and the integration of ports across the country continued to advance. The pattern of "one province, one port" has become increasingly prominent.

    The construction of public information service platform of the port and shipping industry made a breakthrough this year. On February 28th, Shanghai Port launched a one-stop search service website "Harbor Aspect"; Zhejiang butts docking Yangtze River information platform; Jiangsu Province to promote multimodal transport platform.

    Among the highlights, the so-called "unmanned wharf", which has attracted the most global attention, has been completed and put into use in some of China's ports - Qingdao Port, Xiamen Port, Shanghai Yangshan Port, etc.

    Qingdao Port Automated Terminal

    On May 11th this year, the world's leading and the Asian first fully automated terminal of Qingdao Port came into commercial operation, and the system is stable and reliable. Independent intellectual property rights in Qingdao Port achieved full intelligent decision-making and system-wide management, subverting the traditional container terminal operating mode. In the past seven months, the "Qingdao Model" featuring low cost, short cycle, high starting point, total intelligence, high efficiency, safer emission and zero emission has drawn wide attention both at home and abroad.

    On the morning of December 3rd, Qingdao Port putting into operation for only 7 months achieved a global operating record of 39.6 natural bales per hour, surpassing that of artificial wharf, setting the highest average operating efficiency per unit of the global automation terminal, 50% more efficient than the global average.

    In particular, the Qingdao Port Automated Terminal is highly regarded by the Association for Science and Technology of China and was awarded the "China Smart Top Ten Scientific and Technological Progress (2017)" , which was the first time in China's port industry. At the same time, Qingdao Port Automated Terminal won 25 national patents, published 10 papers and prepared 18 enterprise standards.

    Shanghai Yangshan Port the Fourth Phase

    On December 10th, the opening of the fourth phase of Shanghai Yangshan Deepwater Port, the world's largest automated terminal constructed by China State Construction Harbour Construction Co., Ltd, owned by China State Construction Engineering Corporation, was put into trial production, marking the operation mode and technical application of China's port industry’s milestone-based escalation and major changes, pouring new impetus into the Shanghai Port to speed up the forefront of the world's shipping center .

    The terminal adopts the fully automated container terminal construction scheme that represents the highest level of international container terminal technology. It symbolizes that China's port construction is advanced from "construction" to "intelligence", and construction technology is always at the forefront of the world.

    Yangshan Deepwater Port is the world's largest island-type artificial deep-water port and a strategic and pivotal project for the construction of Shanghai International Shipping Center. It is reported that the opening of the Yangshan Port the Fourth Phase since its construction started in 2014 and lasted for three years to build 2.23 million square meters of land area and 2,350 meters of container port shoreline and seven large container deep water berths can be arranged. And the designed throughput is 4 million TEUs per year, and forward target is 6.3 million TEUs.

    Under the general trend of international container transport with large-scale ships, coalition of operations and network of transportation routes, the trend of port intelligence becomes more and more obvious.

    Although port automation is the trend of the times, there are some practical obstacles to the popularization and application of automated ports. First, the high cost and one-time huge investment discourage so many companies d. The cost is lower in terms of the full life cycle, but considering the one-time high investment and long construction returns, the investors are very cautious about the construction of automated terminals. Second, there is the risk of operation. The stability and reliability of automated terminals remains to be seen. Once automated, neither operating systems nor automation devices allow "trial and error", since in the event of a failure, it is very likely that the entire terminal will be paralyzed, which is inconceivable for a terminal with a huge container throughput.

    However, under the trend of large-scale ships, the significance of automation to enhance the competitiveness of the ports in the future is self-evident. Therefore, port automation should be "a must for ports with high throughput and strength", and it is also an inevitable stage to go through. In the future, in addition to the intelligent handling of the entire port itself, it also needs to know more information through the Internet of Things and sensors, such as container status, port equipment condition, equipment energy consumption, vehicle location, etc.. Combined with ship arriving information, booking suitcase information, terminal weather information and other external information, after the multidimensional data analysis of the data center, from the optimal scheduling, scientific maintenance, energy saving, prevention of congestion and other aspects of self-management, reflecting the knowledge system instead of people's decision-making, this stage is the "smart port" stage.

    In the field of smart ports, the future development of our country will be very rapid. First of all, China's port throughput ranked first in the world, and among the world's top ten ports, China owns 7, there is a greater demand for port intelligence. Second, it is precisely because of the large number of large ports in the world that there are more ports that have sufficient funds to invest in port intelligence. In addition, China has achieved an all-round breakthrough in the port intelligent technology, and both the information industry and the manufacturing industry in our country can provide adequate technical and equipment support to port intelligence. In the process of the great development of the port intelligence in our country, related enterprises in our country should transform the strength of hardware and software into "standard strength" as soon as possible and truly have the full right to speak and take the lead in the international port intelligent market.

    JLC believes that: as we all know, the development of bunker oil and port cargo throughput is closely related, which means that the development of the port industry has a direct impact on the development of bunker oil, and bright highlights and record-breaking port performance for the development of bunker oil laid a bright future for the development. Meanwhile, the smart ports also lights the future for the bunker oil market. In short, under the background of global economic and trade booming and port shipping booming, the prospect of bunker oil can be optimistic.