Ningbo Seaport Essay

Ningbo Seaport

The Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan is a Chinese port that is the busiest in the world in terms of cargo tonnage. It is located in Ningbo and Zhoushan, on the coast of the East China Sea, in Zhejiang province south of Hangzhou Bay, across which it faces Jiaxing and Shanghai.

The port is at the crossroads of the north-south inland and coastal shipping route, including canals to the important inland waterway to interior China, the Yangtze River, to the north.

Ningbo Port was established in 738 during China's ancient history. During the Tang Dynasty (618-907), it was known as one of the three major seaports for foreign trade under the name "Mingzhou", along with Yangzhou and Guangzhou.

In the Song Dynasty, it became one of the three major port cities for foreign trade together with

There are a total of 191 berths including 39 deep water berths with 10,000 and more tonnage.

The larger ports include the 250,000 tonnage crude oil terminal, the 200,000+ tonnage ore loading berth. There is also a purpose-built terminal for the 6th generation container vessel and the 50,000 tonnage berth dedicated for liquid chemical products.

Importance of Ports to Ningbo

The port of Ningbo serve as the gateway to the outside world thus providing excellent deep natural harbours in tandem with its strategic location on the coast of the East China Sea . These unique location of the port have been the single most significant factor to have shaped its history and destiny over thousands of years (Dingli, 2007).

This port has allowed Ningbo to play an international role of importance far outweighing its size of 320 km and population of 7,605,689. The ports of Ningbo made over 9,000 ship calls in port/designated anchorage in 2006. In addition, around 1,000,000 tons of bunkers provided to ships by local bunker barges annually.

Operations of the Ningbo