TENDERS
will soon be called for foreign terminal operators for Shanghai’s new deepwater
port – which is one of the largest and most complex infrastructure projects in
China, the Financial Times reported.
Work
on the project is reported to be ahead of schedule, and the city is rushing to
complete the first phase by late next year to keep up with growing demand.
Container traffic in Shanghai has doubled in the three years to 2003 to 11.3
million TEU.
The
port is being built on reclaimed land between several islands connected to the
mainland by a 31 kilometre bridge. The report said that the new port was
required for the city to meet its ambition to overtake Hong Kong and Singapore
as the world’s largest shipping center. When completed in 2020 at a cost of
US$10 billion, the port will be able to accommodate 50 large container berths.
According
to the report, the building of a six-lane bridge requires engineers and workers
to drive several thousand pylons into the ocean floor using a Global
Positioning System backed by three to four satellites to guide the pylons into
place within a degree of accuracy of between three and five millimeters.
The
vice-president of the Yangshan port project, Zhang Huimin, said the bridge
would be completed slightly ahead of time by October next year and the first
terminal would be open in 2006.
He
said the company would have to start considering foreign bids to operate the
second terminal which is expected to be operational in early 2007. This, he
said, would be done in the second half of this year.