Port-city integration to strengthen the "strong support" of the port economy

Recently, affected by the Red Sea crisis and other factors, global ports have been congested again, while Qingdao Port, the second largest foreign trade port in China, still maintains stable operation and makes every effort to ensure the smooth operation of the industrial chain and supply chain.

In today's sea, land, air and rail links, why is the port important?

The port is an important infrastructure, public service platform and window connecting the world, from shoes, hats, handbags, accessories, to trains, airplanes, offshore oil rigs, almost all kinds of goods, all forms of goods can be transported by sea through the port, which has more advantages than air and land transportation.

The port is also the "barometer" and "weather vane" of the macro economy, from textiles and garments, electronic products, furniture, mechanical and electrical equipment and other export products, to iron ore, crude oil, rubber and other imported bulk commodities, the volume of each cargo in and out of the port can reflect the scale of the city's industry and the operating conditions of enterprises, reflecting the economic activity.

Born because of the port and thriving by the port is the development law of modern marine cities. Nearly 90% of global trade is done by sea, 50% of the world's wealth is concentrated in coastal port cities, and 31 of the world's 35 international metropolises have developed because of their ports. The rise of international shipping centers such as London, Singapore and Shanghai is the result of the deep integration of ports, industries and cities.

For Qingdao, the port is the core strategic resource to build a modern marine economic development highland, and it must aim to accelerate the construction of a world-class port, further strengthen the port hub function, promote the smart and green transformation of the port, make up for the shortcomings of high-end shipping services, and play a greater role in the allocation of global resources.

Build a solid foundation

It is often said in the port and shipping industry that tonnage determines status. Qingdao Port also has a proud propaganda slogan, "how big the ship in the world, how big the wharf is in Qingdao Port, what goods you have, Qingdao Port can unload what goods."

The huge throughput is a strong footnote to the development of Qingdao's marine economy. In 2023, the cargo throughput of Qingdao Port will exceed 700 million tons and the container throughput will exceed 30 million TEUs, ranking fourth and fifth in the world, respectively. According to the latest data, the total number of routes in Qingdao Port has reached 227, covering more than 700 ports in more than 180 countries and regions around the world, ranking first in the route density of northern ports in China, with 83 sea-rail intermodal trains and 50 inland ports, ranking first in the country in terms of sea-rail intermodal container volume for nine consecutive years.

In the new journey of building a world-class port, the role of the port has shifted from a loading and unloading port to a hub port, a trade port, and a financial port, and from "counting boxes" to "counting orders" and "counting tickets", but it does not mean that the throughput is not important, but it should be more consolidated and strengthened.

Behind the throughput is not only the large inflow and outflow of goods, but also the agglomeration of logistics, business flow, human flow, capital flow and information flow, which is the most direct embodiment of the status of the port hub. If there is no sufficient scale of throughput, the logistics, trade, finance and other businesses that rise around the traditional main business of the port will lose its hard foundation, let alone attract high-end shipping services such as shipping finance, shipping brokerage, maritime arbitration and information consulting.

To strengthen the hub function, it is necessary to break the bottleneck of growth with the construction of port infrastructure.

The "Three-Year Action Plan for the Construction of World-class Port Clusters in Shandong Province (2023-2025)" released last year proposes that the first of the six major improvement actions is to build a first-class port infrastructure that serves the world, including the continuation, new construction and transformation of a series of containers, bulk dry bulk cargo, crude oil, LNG, general cargo, ro-ro berths and supporting yards, tank farms, as well as the construction of "two main hubs" for international container transportation and ro-ro transportation in Northeast Asia. China's grain storage and transportation "three distribution bases", etc.

Looking at Qingdao, a series of major port projects are being stepped up to open up new space for future throughput improvement.

This year, Shandong Port has started 11 new projects in Qingdao with a total investment of 52.1 billion yuan, including 10 billion yuan projects such as the Qianwan Port Container Upgrading Project and the Dongjiakou-Yishui New Railway Project. Especially in the Qianwan port area, the container upgrading and transformation project with a total investment of about 20 billion yuan will be started in phases, which will upgrade the completed containers, bulk cargo and multi-purpose berths, laying the foundation for Qingdao Port to build an international shipping hub center in Northeast Asia and a leading container hub port in Northeast Asia.

Grab a new track

Currently, the shipping industry is facing an unprecedented digital transformation and energy transformation. In the latest research report "The World's Leading Maritime Capital" released by Det Norske Veritas and Menon Economics, the indicators of digitalization and green transformation are being weighted more and more.

Looking at the long-term strategic planning of cities such as Singapore and Shanghai, smart and green ports are considered at the core of the development of the marine economy. For Qingdao, the smart green port is also an inevitable choice for "changing lanes and overtaking". Not long ago, Qingdao Port successively released a special plan for digital transformation and a plan for the construction and development of a hydrogen energy port to accelerate the transformation to a smart and green port.

In terms of smart ports, Qingdao already has a certain first-mover advantage. As early as 2013, Qingdao Port set up the "Liangang Innovation Team" led by Zhang Liangang and began to climb to the commanding heights of the world's port technology. In 2017, the first phase of Qingdao Port's automated terminal was put into operation, becoming the first truly automated container terminal in Asia. In 2019, the second phase of Qingdao Port Automation Terminal was put into operation, using six world-first scientific and technological achievements such as hydrogen-powered automated rail cranes. Last year, the first fully autonomous automated terminal in China, Qingdao Port Automated Terminal (Phase III) of Shandong Port, was put into operation. For more than 10 years of terminal operation, the terminal has broken the world record for 10 consecutive times, making the flag of "Made in China" flutter in the wind at the peak of the global automated terminal.

The digital transformation of Qingdao Port is not a one-man breakthrough of the container terminal, but a comprehensive breakthrough in the core technology of the key areas of the port, promoting the transformation of the loading and unloading of ore, pulp, grain and other types of cargo from manual operation to automatic control, and achieving a series of national and even global pioneering achievements such as intelligent air rail collection and distribution system, port information model (PIM), and automated terminal intelligent management and control system.

Going hand in hand with digital transformation is the green transition.

Over the years, Qingdao Port has always focused on low-carbon transportation structure, clean energy supply, electrification of energy consumption, normalization of shore power use, and green and low-carbon demonstration, and promoted the green upgrading of production mode. Since 2019, Qingdao Port has launched research on hydrogen energy container trucks and rail cranes, real-life operation of hydrogen energy container trucks, the world's first hydrogen-powered automated rail crane, and the first fully qualified port hydrogen refueling station in China, laying a solid foundation for the construction of hydrogen energy ports in all scenarios. At present, Qingdao Port is working with Qingdao Refining & Chemical to promote the country's largest 4,000 kg hydrogen refueling sub-mother station, and plans to complete and put into use the world's first 7,000 hp hydrogen-electric hybrid tug next year. In the new track of methanol ship bunkering, Qingdao Port is also preparing to start the renovation of terminal bunkering facilities.

In addition to the port, Qingdao has also fully studied and judged the development trend of green fuels, increased the research and development of green fuel preparation, storage, transportation and refueling systems such as LNG, methanol and ammonia, as well as green ship power equipment, so as to provide guarantee for the application of low-carbon energy in real ships.

Enhance soft power

An interesting phenomenon can also be found in the study of the port and shipping industry, 8 of the world's top 10 coastal ports are in China, and Qingdao Port is among them, and among the top 10 global shipping center cities in terms of comprehensive strength, only Shanghai, Hong Kong, Ningbo and Zhoushan are on the list. This is because a city's status as a shipping center is not entirely determined by the energy level of the port.

There is a very well-known index in the industry, namely the Xinhua Baltic International Shipping Center Development Index. This index evaluates the comprehensive strength of cities from three dimensions: port conditions, shipping services and comprehensive environment, among which shipping services are the core driving factors to evaluate the competitiveness of international shipping centers. Although Qingdao has obvious advantages in "hard power" indicators such as port throughput, infrastructure and operation level, it still has a lot of room for improvement compared with old shipping centers such as London and Singapore in "soft power" indicators such as finance, ship brokerage, information technology and maritime arbitration.

Jumping out of the port to see the port, Qingdao is committed to establishing competitive coordinates in a new dimension, strengthening the high-end shipping service industry including shipping finance, shipping insurance, and shipping transactions, and transforming the hub "flow" into economic "retention".

For example, commodity indices have price discovery and risk hedging functions that can be used by trading companies to reduce the risk of commodity price fluctuations. The Xinhua Shandong Port Commodity Index was first released in Qingdao in 2021, and has been continuously upgraded and improved since then, covering 13 indices in 7 categories, including iron ore, crude oil, and coal, providing a value benchmark and effective reference for port trade activities, and enabling efficient linkage between port shipping, bulk commodities and trade.

In recent years, Qingdao has continued to make up for its shortcomings, strengths and weaknesses in the shipping service industry, and a series of industrial platforms such as the International Energy Trading Center, the Northern Oil and Gas Center, the Shandong International Shipping Exchange, the Gangxin Futures Company, and the Ship Trading Center have been implemented one after another, expanding and strengthening new business formats such as shipping trading, finance and insurance, and bulk commodity trade, and enhancing the global allocation capacity of shipping resources.

Among them, the "Gangyun Warehouse" platform of Shandong Port, as a comprehensive service platform with the largest volume and the most mature operation of electronic warehouse receipt business in coastal ports in China, has served more than 140 customers inside and outside the province, handled more than 410 electronic warehouse receipt financings, and handled more than 10 million tons of warehouse receipt financing and financing amount of more than 12.5 billion yuan; Shandong Port International Trade Group carries out trade business, fully integrates into more than 400 upstream and downstream enterprises in 30 types of goods such as crude oil, iron ore and coal, and contributes more than 46.7 billion yuan to the local import and export value. Gangxin Futures Co., Ltd. has developed rapidly, and its business varieties cover a variety of goods such as iron ore and rubber, and the function of futures and spot linkage services has been initially brought into play......

A grand blueprint for the integration of port and city is slowly unfolding. (Qingdao Daily/Guanhai News reporter Zhou Xiaofeng)