In winter, at the South China Sea port and the operation wharf of a port in South China, Lao Xu, a stevedore, is still operating the shore bridge at high altitude to load and unload containers. This Spring Festival, the wharf did not leave a large number of workers such as Lao Xu who did not go home to celebrate the festival with their families, and their busy and closed has long been their new normal in the past year.
Li Gang (a pseudonym) is a senior manager of the port company. He has continued to connect with large manufacturing customers. He has also been busy for a year. Under the impact of the epidemic, Li Gang continued to run between enterprises and shipping companies in order to smooth export of enterprise orders, bearing great pressure.
The past year was the most difficult year for many port operators like Lao Xu and Li Gang, but in the end, they set a new record.
record
“The shift schedule changes, the storage yard is chaotic, and the world is blocked.” This is Li Gang’s keyword summary of the current situation of ports in China and even the world in 2021 in a PPT report.
In May 2021, South China ports, including Li Gang’s port, experienced the closure of Shenzhen Yan Tian Port Holdings Co.Ltd(000088) outbreak, which exacerbated port congestion.
“At that time, we were very busy. There were mountains of containers waiting to be handled, and the work became very busy. In addition, the epidemic led to the closed management of the port. We ate and lived in the temporary plank houses in the port area, which were completely isolated from the outside world. We were also very depressed and felt great pressure.” Recalling the work experience of being sealed up six months ago, Lao Xu still has a fresh memory.
In August, Ningbo Zhoushan port also closed some docks due to the epidemic; In addition, as the typhoon “fireworks” hit East China in July, it affected the business of the two major container ports of Shanghai port and Ningbo Zhoushan port, making the congestion of Chinese ports reach a peak.
In order to ship early, some enterprises had to transport the containers to the port in advance and wait for the containers to be returned to the ship. As a result, many ports, including Shenzhen Yan Tian Port Holdings Co.Ltd(000088) , Guangzhou Port Company Limited(601228) , Shanghai port, Ningbo Zhoushan Port Company Limited(601018) , have introduced measures to limit the flow of containers.
Throughout the major ports, this year can be described as “from the beginning to the end of the year”. However, even in the case of continuous port congestion, the throughput of port goods and containers reached a new high last year, and further consolidated the status of a major port in the world.
According to the news on the official website of the Ministry of transport on January 19, 2022, the national port cargo throughput in 2021 was 15.545 billion tons, a year-on-year increase of 6.8%, of which the foreign trade cargo throughput was 4.697 billion shares, a year-on-year increase of 4.5%; Throughout the year, the national port container throughput was 283 million TEU, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%.
Behind the growth of cargo throughput, China’s foreign trade has set a new record. On January 14, 2022, the General Administration of Customs of the people’s Republic of China released data: in 2021, the total import and export volume of China’s goods trade reached 39.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 21.4% over 2020. When converted into US dollars, the scale of China’s foreign trade has reached the level of US $6 trillion. Among them, the export was 21.73 trillion yuan, an increase of 21.2%; Imports reached 17.37 trillion yuan, an increase of 21.5%.
In an interview with China business, the reporter found that on the one hand, under the accelerated return of global manufacturing orders to China, China’s export volume continued to grow, and on the other hand, the basic support of China’s ports continued to play a key role in high operation efficiency — Li Gang introduced that due to the fact that port enterprises and employees The special shift system has paid huge financial, material and human resources. The cost of epidemic prevention in Chinese ports has risen sharply, but the operation efficiency of Chinese ports is still the highest in the world.
adjust
A few days before the Spring Festival, Li Gang and members of the company’s port team visited a large manufacturing enterprise in China for discussion. The two sides signed a long-term export service agreement. The enterprise is the first tier manufacturing enterprise in China. A large number of products are transported to overseas developed countries such as Europe and the United States through the port of Li Gang company every year.
\u3000\u3000 “Let’s sit down and sum up the year 2021. Now they have made strategic adjustments. In the past, production, orders and quality were the key priorities, and now logistics is put in the same primary position. In the future, the construction of factories should give priority to the safety of logistics transportation supply chain and the reliability, stability and sustainability of logistics, because the products are not produced in the same place Local consumption, but to be exported to Europe and the United States and other developed countries for global customers. Therefore, we should first consider whether the logistics and transportation chain is reliable. ” Li Gang said.
According to Li Gang, this enterprise had previously opened a factory in a country in Southeast Asia, where there are very cheap land price, labor, hydropower and other resources, and the local government has also provided many preferential policies for factory construction investment. However, after they riveted their efforts to produce, they finally found that the products were difficult to transport out, unable to deliver orders to European and American customers on time, resulting in a series of problems, Causing legal disputes such as breach of contract.
\u3000\u3000 “The local area is an inland area. There are no docks for large container ships to dock, and some are only small berths, which is very troublesome. In addition, manufacturing enterprises are often not professional in logistics and need shipping companies to provide services. Large shipping companies such as Maersk and COSCO Shipping do not necessarily have advantages locally, so they can only rely on local small and medium-sized shipping companies to provide services 。” Li Gang said that for most manufacturing enterprises, it doesn’t make much sense to build factories in Southeast Asia.
Li Gang said that like the above-mentioned large household electrical appliance enterprises, under the impact of the epidemic, many manufacturing orders returned to China in 2021, because China has many large ports that can provide stable shipping services and ensure the stability and accessibility of cargo transportation.
