The Taizhou international container terminal – located in the Yangtze River port city of Taizhou, East China's Jiangsu province – set a new record for handling containers in the first quarter.
It handled 88,500 twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs – the standard freight industry container size – marking a 22 percent increase compared with the same period last year.
Both foreign trade and domestic trade containers saw significant growth in Q1, with their respective volumes hitting 46,000 TEUs and 42,500 TEUs, to establish new records with growth rates of 23 percent and 20 percent.
The robust performance of the terminal reflected the thriving industrial development in Taizhou, said Zhu Haitao, deputy head of the city's Gaogang district, where the terminal is located.
Taizhou Customs reported that the total value of imports and exports came in at 43.73 billion yuan ($6.03 billion) in the first quarter. That ranked Taizhou sixth in the province, while the growth rate of 43.8 percent ranked it second highest in the province.
Key industries such as home appliances, photovoltaics and automobiles are said to have contributed significantly to the expansion of the terminal's operations.
Private companies in Taizhou have shown exceptional vitality in their foreign trade, with import and export values reaching a combined 22.41 billion yuan in Q1, a whopping increase of 80.5 percent. Many of these enterprises are said to prefer the Taizhou container terminal for their import and export activities.
To further boost efficiency and improve the service quality, the terminal has intensified cooperation with barge companies to increase barge density and has expanded feeder services to major ports.
Additionally, efforts are underway to customize logistics solutions for customers and to streamline transportation efficiency.
Looking ahead, the terminal is aiming to obtain hazardous goods operations permits and to achieve container throughput of 360,000 TEUs in 2024, representing a 5 percent increase year-on-year.