China Shipping's freighter New Haikou sets sail from Tianjin Port

Tianjin Port, Guangzhou Port, and the state-owned China Shipping Group signed agreements to cooperate more closely and provide better service for domestic container lines yesterday in the Binhai New Area.

Tianjin Port, northern China’s largest, and Guangzhou Port, the largest in southern China, both serve enormous inland industrial areas.

"Their cooperation will stimulate domestic trade significantly,” one official with Tianjin Port said.

The three parties will work together on extending services and providing “door to door” sea-rail combined transportation for clients, according to Li Shaode, president of China Shipping Group.

The Shanghai-based China Shipping Group, founded in 1997 in Shagnhai, is a global shipping conglomerate. It has five fleets of oil tankers, tramps, passenger ships, container vessels and special cargo ships with a total of over 440 vessels, which handled an annual traffic volume of over 390 million tons.

Guangzhou Port is a major hub for international trade in South China and a gate on the sea for a vast portion of China’s interior, including Guangxi, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou, Hunan, and Hubei. The port handled 347 million tons of cargo in 2008, including over 11 million containers, ranking fourth among China’s ports.

By Guo Changdong