Pearl River Delta, The Main Hub Container Port Construction Scale

The past decade has seen a continuous rapid growth of container throughput in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong Province. The container throughput of Guangzhou Port, Shenzhen Port and Zhuhai Port, which were listed as the national main hub ports by the Ministry of Communication, totaled 17.36 million TEU in the year 2004, with an annul growth rate of 36.2% from 1996 to 2004. While the harbor container throughput increases by a big margin, the problem entailed becomes prominent. The insufficient container handling capacity has hurdled the further development of container transportation.Under such background, ports in the region hold high spirits in the construction of additional container terminals. However, in recent years, an absence of overall planning on development of main hub ports in the Pearl River Delta has caused somewhat disorder of container terminals construction. Therefore, in order to enable the development of container harbor to satisfy the need of hinterland economy as well as to make full use of the limited harbor waterfront resources, a systematic research on the rational construction scale of container terminals in the Pearl River Delta is required. This research will cover Guangzhou Port, Shenzhen Port and Zhuhai Port. Since Hong Kong adjoins the three ports geographically, and shares with them a common economic hinterland, Hong Kong will be included in the study. The target year of the research is 2010.Based on the analysis of present situation and prospect planning of the main hub ports and the harbor economic hinterland in Pearl River Delta, this paper will discuss the status quo, the development tendency as well as the existing problems of the container transportation at the three ports. It will study the relation between foreign trade container generation and the total foreign trade volume. Through foreseeing the hinterland foreign trade container generation in Pearl River Delta with the adoption of quantitative analytic methods, and predicting domestic trade container production quantity and international relay quantity by qualitative analytical method, the hinterland container throughput of the planned year will be calculated. On the basis of such calculation and in line with concepts of system engineering, a container transportation network model will be established. With the analysis on transportation system, a rational distribution of goods at the main hub ports will be worked out and harbor construction scale of the targeted year be identified.The research indicates that in 2010 the container throughput of Shenzhen Port, Guangzhou Port and Zhuhai Port will hit 35.92 million TEU, 12.7 million TEU and 2.66 million TEU respectively. The container handling capacity gap of the threeharbors will reach 37.25 million TEU totally, with Shenzhen Port 25.51 million TEU, Guangzhou Port 9.42 million TEU and Zhuhai Port 2.32 million TEU. To meet the booming increase of containers, it is necessary to enhance the handling capacity by means of constructing additional container terminals and upgrading and existing wharfs.