China Merchants Ports Holdings (CMP) and Taiwan’s Wan Hai Lines have signed a strategic cooperation agreement to boost container volumes in the former’s berths in western Shenzhen in southern China.
In recent years, Wan Hai’s container volumes in Shekou terminal in Shenzhen have grown from 15% to 20% annually. This year, Wan Hai expects volumes to exceed 1.3 million TEU.
The Taipei-headquartered liner operator said that the agreement with CMP will push cargo volumes to new heights, and both sides are targeting annual volumes of 2 million TEU.
Wan Hai operates 33 service lanes that call at Shekou, including three Transpacific lanes, 15 Southeast Asian routes and two Asia-South America routes.
The Taiwanese carrier has shown its ambitions for growth as the market heats up. Since the start of 2021, Wan Hai has commissioned two dozen Panamax vessels at Nihon Shipyard and nine 13,000TEU ships at Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries. The company has also moved towards internationalization, by launching solo Transpacific and South America services.
CMP, which expects its terminals in western Shenzhen to process at least 12 million TEU this year, saw its revenue grow by 39% year-on-year, to US$729.77 million in 1H 2021, while net profit more than doubled, to US$679.64 million.
In the first six months of the year, CMP’s container volumes grew 21% to 66.51 million TEU, while the group’s ports in western Shenzhen processed 5.79 million TEU, registering 27% year-on-year growth.
