Just like playing chess, you should take the key step after connecting chess pieces during layout stage. Yangtze River Company, incorporating 18 ports and logistics enterprises along Yangtze River, was established on Jun, 1. President of SIPG, Chen Xuyuan describes this significant integration of Shanghai port into the key step in chess game.
As early as 2002, SIPG had begun to implement “Yangtze River Strategy”, first signed cooperation intention with Wuhan port in that very year, so as to jointly operate Wuhan container wharf. SIPG invested in the main ports of Chongqing, Jiujiang, Nanjing, Jiangyin, Changsha, Yibin and so on successively along Yangtze River coast subsequently, and set up large logistics parks and warehouses at some of the ports, established shipping enterprises, so that a shipping network of Yangtze River from Chongqing to Shanghai was formed gradually.
However, footing of “Yangtze River Strategy” established by SIPG eight years ago is the growth of case quantity. “From 2000 to 2008, growth amplitude for annual throughput of container at Shanghai port is more than 20%, Yangtze River port was intended to be invested at that time not only for better serving Yangtze river basin, but also for attracting the commodity supply along coast to be exported through Shanghai, so as to maintain sustainable growth of cases quantity at Shanghai port.” Never have people thought that global financial crisis upset company’s strategic plan. Since 2008, serious downslide situation, not happened over decades, occurred for throughput of container at Shanghai port with more than 15% for downslide amplitude. During that period, quantity of exported containers at each port along Yangtze River was also greatly reduced; Overcapacity phenomenon appeared at each wharf. Container quantity didn’t increase, but operating cost was hard to be reduced.
Original strategy encounters new problems, so can new connotation be endowed to “Yangtze River Strategy”? Chen Xuyuan showed，“with a large development space in the future, Yangtze River is still golden watercourse for Chinese economy, so the key point is to change idea, aim at new demand and keep up with new trend.” Fro retrospect, rapid development of Shanghai port relied on dramatic increase of Chinese foreign trade to a great extent. However, international economic pattern has changed, original development pattern becomes unsustainable; After all Shanghai port is the second largest container port in the world, increase space of container quantity is limited. Even there is no financial crisis, container quantity also cannot be taken as evaluation criteria for Shanghai port; Productivity must be emancipated from simple wharf loading & unloading, so as to greatly develop the industry of modern shipping logistics and improve additional value of shipping industry.
How to innovate to meet emergency? Chen Xuyuan showed, “capacity increment cannot be pursued blindly for Yangtze River strategy, but to use the existing resource efficiently.” There were 18 enterprises being operated independently along Yangtze River previously; Shipping enterprises only took charge of transportation and port companies were only responsible for loading & unloading at local wharf, so they operated separately with no synergistic effect at all. After unified Yangtze River Company was established by SIPG, they have tried to develop in this aspect through uniting the scattered chess pieces and integrating the sources, so as to improve utilization rate. Hereafter, new company can provide a whole set of logistics solution, not single wharf service, for customers along Yangtze River basin. For example, there is a batch of goods to be delivered from Shanghai to Chongqing, which port should be selected for transit shipment, which kind of short connection mode should be adopted, if they need to be directly delivered to door, which can be customed according to requirement of customers. “The point is numerous permutations and combinations can be generated by alliance, so that logistics products category can be greatly enriched, so that value of logistics industry chain along the whole Yangtze River basin can be embodied.”
There are a lot of works to do if you want to utilize the golden watercourse flexibly. We got news that Shanghai port will close down some of the idle wharfs and storage yards on the basis of resource integration along river in the next step, so as to develop high-end logistic domain vehemently.