On the sea surface of the Yangshan Port Area of the Port of Shanghai, a behemoth can be seen from time to time recently. It is the world's largest LNG fueling ship with a capacity of 20,000 cubic meters, ready to provide fuel fueling service for CMA-CGM’s container liners berthing in the Yangshan Port Area in the coming March.

This will be the "first order" China gets for bonded LNG fueling service from an international shipping company. It also means that the Port of Shanghai will become the third port in the world with the capacity to provide LNG fueling services, after the Port of Rotterdam and Port of Singapore. Xu Longping, Chairman of Shanghai SIPG Energy Service Co., Ltd, said that the new service will bring a new business growth driver to the Port of Shanghai and more importantly, improve its service functions, attract dual-fuel ships of other countries, improve the comprehensive competitiveness of Shanghai as an international shipping center and promote the sustainable development of the local shipping industry.

Empowering the development of the Port of Shanghai with ongoing innovation

To secure this "first order," the Yangshan Port Area had made preparations for a year. Relevant personnel did a lot of work, including safety verification, process formulation, as well as institutional and management innovations. The support of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government and various competent departments, the institutional advantages of the Lin-gang Special Area of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, the strong backing of the LNG base of the Yangshan Port Area and the sound dock infrastructure all helped the Port of Shanghai to win the order.

People familiar with the development history of the Port of Shanghai have a special feeling for the Yangshan Port Area, which is the starting point of its journey towards prosperity, and has always been the vanguard in its development and innovation. Case after case have emerged from the Yangshan Port Area, showing its innovative empowerment of the Port of Shanghai over the years.

In the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has posed multiple challenges to the global port and shipping industry. With its existing shoreline resources, the Port of Shanghai has managed to set one record after another in both cargo throughput and production efficiency, effectively becoming the "safeguard anchor" of the international logistics supply chain. In 2021, the Port of Shanghai saw a container throughput of over 47 million TEUs, up by 8.1% year on year. As the main growth engine of the Port of Shanghai, the Yangshan Port Area performed particularly well, achieving an annual throughput of over 22.8 million TEUs, up by 12.8% year on year.

Yang Yanbin, Deputy General Manager of the Production Business Department of Shanghai International Port Group (“SIPG”), said that this "miracle" is the result of the SIPG’s continuous efforts to upgrade hardware and software infrastructures and tap into internal potential by pursuing system, business and technological innovations in the Yangshan Port Area.

As far as hardware infrastructure construction is concerned, the Yangshan IV Automatic Dock added 5 bridge cranes and 12 rail cranes in the past year, which had a container throughput of over 5.7 million TEUs. At the same time, work has also started to build yards for empty and heavy containers in the Yangshan Port Area. The empty container yard is part of the Port of Shanghai’s Northeast Asia Empty Container Transportation Center Project, with the aim of meeting future business needs in the post-COVID-19 era. Once the shipping industry returns to normal, the Port of Shanghai will collaborate with shipping companies to make effective use of empty containers and promote the healthy development of the international shipping industry.

As for software infrastructure construction, the SIPG has taken the Yangshan Port Area as a test field and continuously promoted the construction of port information and intelligent systems. Thanks to the digital twin system officially put into use at the end of 2020, the Yangshan IV Automatic Dock can be replicated in the virtual space. In the past year, this technology allowed the dock to make continuous test and algorithm optimization for its intelligent management and control system, without affecting port operations. It immensely helped to improve operational efficiency. Meanwhile, the smart port and smart production digital platform developed by the SIPG amid the COVID-19 pandemic has connected the big data of all the docks. This allows the Yangshan Port Area to extend its shipping scheduling from 48 hours to 72 hours in advance, which effectively improves the predictability of port and ship operations and the utilization of shoreline and machinery resources. In addition, after the data are connected, Shengdong and Guandong docks in the Yangshan Port Area have innovatively introduced a model of “shared storage yard” to further improve the utilization rate of storage spaces, container trucks and other resources.

In addition to the above measures, 5G Smart Heavy Truck Construction, SIPG Super Long-range Intelligent Command and Control Center and other innovative projects are also blooming and bearing fruit in the Yangshan Port Area. All these are expected to further empower the future development of the Port of Shanghai.

Focusing on both the present and future planning

In 2022, the global shipping industry is still full of challenges. However, the SIPG has set a higher goal of making big breakthroughs on its 47.033 million TEU freight volume last year. The Yangshan Port Area will continue to be the main contributor to the SIPG’s container shipping business.

Why does the Port of Yangshan have confidence to set a higher goal? The port focuses on the present and plans for the future, making solid progress step by step along the way.

Last year, the digital twin system adopted at the Yangshan IV Automatic Dock has now been gradually promoted for use at other docks. This year, the SIPG will adopt VR, digital twin and other new technologies and new means to continue to promote the construction of the smart port and smart production digital platform and form the 2.0 version of the platform. In the Smart Port and Smart Production Digital Platform 1.0, the SIPG can get a clear and real time picture of the operational status of each dock at the Port of Shanghai on a smart screen. The future goal is to obtain more detailed information, even including the operational status of each equipment on the docks, the navigation of ships on the routes, and the operational status of the collection and distribution system connecting different port areas. This will enable the SIPG to achieve real-time control over dock production at a higher level.

"The Port of Shanghai operates over 300 international routes and has ranked first in port connectivity in the world for many consecutive years. Serious port congestions in Europe and America amid the COVID-19 pandemic have caused chaos to international liners, making it difficult to schedule port production. We hope to add a real-time foreign trade shipping route control system into the Smart Port and Smart Production Digital Platform 2.0, so as to know in advance ship congestions at overseas ports and ship arrivals at the Port of Shanghai. This will enable us to coordinate port resources, avoid uneven load distribution between docks and further release handling capacities to safeguard smooth supplies on the global industrial chain," said Yang Yanbin. Currently, the smart port and smart production digital platform has completed the digital twin monitoring integration of the Yangshan IV Automatic Dock, the preliminary digital twin modeling of the Waigaoqiao IV Dock, as well as the twin design of channel and anchorage in the whole port area. In the meantime, data connectivity with the maritime ship automatic identification system, marine meteorological, tide and other data has also completed.

The Port of Shanghai is expected to open the Northeast Asia Empty Container Transportation Center in the Yangshan Port Area in the first half of this year. Through a new digital operation mode, the SIPG will speed up the turnover of empty containers among the ports in Shanghai, in the Yangtze River Delta Region, along the Yangtze River and in Northeast Asia, and enhance the Port of Shanghai’s capacity to allocate empty container resources worldwide.

To achieve this long-term goal, the SIPG is now proactively looking for partners to speed up the construction of the Waigaoqiao empty container transportation sub-center and copy the model of the Yangshan Port Area in the Waigaoqiao Port Area. It is also planning to find sites and build more sub-centers at the hinterland of the Yangtze River Delta Region and along the Yangtze River.

 

Author: Wang Li, Shanghai Observer