Guangzhou Port to build China's largest automobile logistics island

Aerial view of Shazai Island. [Photo/Yangcheng Evening News]

Shazai Island in Guangzhou's Nansha district is set to become China's largest automobile logistics island hub, Guangzhou Daily reported on May 17. 

Guangzhou Port Group started the roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) transportation of commercial automobiles in 2004, and has since seen an average annual growth in its handling capacity of more than 33 percent. 

Guangzhou Port Group handled 1.5 million commercial automobiles in 2020, ranking top among all coastal ports in China.

Guangzhou Port Group's commercial automobile handling capacity amounted to 513,000 in the first four months of 2021, increasing by 47.4 percent year-on-year. Of the total, 28,000 were exported, an increase of 133.3 percent year-on-year. 

An offshore wharf, now under construction in the Nansha Port area, covers a total area of 825,000 square meters and 1,340 meters of coastline. It is expected to start trial operations in June this year after nearly three years of construction. 

With the operation of an offshore wharf at Shazai Island scheduled this year, Shazai Island will become the largest ro-ro wharf cluster in China, with eight special berths for ro-ro transportation of commercial automobiles, a coastline of 1.8 kilometers, and more than 1.6 million sq m of storage yards.

It is expected that Guangzhou Port will then be ranked among the top ro-ro ports in the world, with its handling capacity of commercial automobiles exceeding two million. 

At present, Nansha Port is China's second largest port for parallel-import automobiles. It had conducted the export of 55,000 parallel-import automobiles by the end of 2020, and has clustered 200 trading companies.