Study On Increasing Port Capacity Of Container In Port Of Ningbo

Since the introduction of container in 1950s, containerized shipping has changed dramatically, those changes has had a significant impact on ports, thus causing port authorities to deepen the channels, enlarge the scales of wharves and handling equipments, make their services more efficient.From the benefit of its good nature and geographical region condition, port of Ningbo has gained a great increasing in container throughput. By the end of 2003 years, she had had 96 liner routes, and the number of liners in each month over than 460. Container throughput in 2003 totaled 2.77 million TEUs, and the growth rate to those in 2002 reached 49.1%, which made Ningbo the leader among Chinese ports.As container throughput grows rapidly, port scale shows insufficient. 7 container berths, with a capacity of 2.2 million TEUs, made port of Ningbo congested. Though another two container berths will be put into production in 2004, the capacity is not satisfied yet. Insufficiency in capacity not only leads high utilization of berths, but also affects development of container transport, so it is essential to study how to speed up container transit in Ningbo, especially the dealing ability of existing terminals.Firstly, this paper analyses the outer condition for developing container transport in Ningbo, presents the tendency of containerized shipping and container vessel, liner route and container terminal. Secondly, the paper studies the distribution of liner routes and the types of arriving vessels in Ningbo, also forecasts the throughput based on Grey Theory. Thirdly, the paper compares the Unbalance Factor method with Queuing Theory, and takes the later as the method to calculate port capacity in Ningbo. After a calculation to the existing container terminals, the paper makes a sensibility analysis according to changes in type of arriving vessel, number of handling facilities, handling efficiency and non-product time. Finally the paper presents the way to prompt the containercapacity in port of Ningbo.The conclusions can be taken as good advice for Ningbo to transform the existing container terminals, and they are useful in speeding up container transit and enhancing its competition ability.