Port of Xiamen

The Port of Xiamen is an important deep water port located in the mouth of the Jiulongjiang River on the southern coastline of Fujian province in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It is one of the trunk line ports in the Asia-Pacific region.

Background
It is ranked the 8th largest container port in the PRC, and ranks 30th among the world's top 100. It is the 4th port in the PRC with the capacity to handle the sixth-generation large container vessels. In 2003, Xiamen handled 34.04 million tons of cargo, including 2.33 million Twenty-foot equivalent units of containers.

The port comprises six areas: Heping, Dongdu, Haitian, Shihushan, Gaoqi and Liuwudian in Tongan.

The world's top 20 shipping companies have all established major shipping routes and operations in Xiamen. A total of 68 shipping routes serve over 50 countries to almost all the major ports in the world, yielding an average 469 ship calls at the port each month in 2011. In addition, passenger services also operate from Xiamen to Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Wenzhou.

The port is owned and operated by Xiamen Port Authority (厦门港口管理局) which is a department of the Xiamen Municipal Government.

Infrastructure
Xiamen is a well-developed first-class port. Dongdu harbor is located on Haicang district which is on the mainland. The coast line in the harbor area stretches for 30 km and the depth of water reaches up to 17 metres.

The port offers 74 berths. One can handle vessels of 100,000 or more tonnes, 23 berths are for 10,000 or more tonnes, and two handle vessels between berths for 5,000 and 10,000 tonnes. There are nine container terminals.

Developments
Xiamen is the first Mainland China port to start the direct shipment of cargo to Kaohsiung in Taiwan. The initial cargo handling capacity totalled 1.34 million TEUs of containers.

Port of Xiamen and coal
Port of Xiamen is a major coal export facility. According to sources from Xiamen Customs, in July 2010, Port of Xiamen imported a total of 900,000 tonnes of power coal from Southeast Asian countries. Xiamen imported about 5.6 million tonnes of coal in the first seven months of the 2010 with a total value of USD $400 million which were respectively 1.9 and 2.2 times higher.

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