Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk aims to invest in new port facilities in China’s fast-growing provincial capital of Chongqing to develop a key inland harbour on the Yangtze River, a senior executive said.
The port terminals wing of the Danish shipping and oil group will sign a memorandum of understanding this week with state-owned Chongqing Port & Logistics Group in conjunction with a visit to Denmark by Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming.
Soren Hansen, senior director of corporate business development in APM Terminals, said no money would change hands at this stage, but Maersk aimed to invest in the Yangtze facility in the short term.
“Growth rates are so high and concentrated on the river so obviously this is a place we really want to be,” Hansen told Reuters.
He said that the entire region of Sichuan, which is home to 100 million people, only has an annual throughput of 400,000 twenty-foot containers annually, so the growth potential is large.
Europe’s busiest container hub, the port of Rotterdam, handled 9.7 million TEU in 2009.
