Hainan FTP opens a new trade corridor with Almaty
On July 15—after a 45-day journey—1,100 tons of bottle-grade PET chips produced by the Yangpu-based Hainan Yisheng Petrochemical Company arrived in Almaty. This marks the opening of a new corridor connecting China’s southernmost province to the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan and its neighbors.
The shipment to Kazakhstan departed from the Yangpu International Container Terminal, transited via COSCO Shipping’s port in Wuhan, then embarked on a rail trip via Xinjiang's China-Europe Railway Express before finally arriving in Almaty. Shortening the original shipping time by 15 days, this new freight route from Yangpu to Almaty has also connected the Hainan Free Trade Port (FTP) with China’s central, eastern, western regions.
Shorter shipping time means lower transportation costs. According to Wang Hongcai (director of the Storage and Transportation Department in the Hainan Yisheng Petrochemical Company), this new freight route is favorable to the company’s ability to expand into Central Asian markets and for increasing their product exports.
Aerial view of the Yangpu International Container Terminal in Hainan. (Photo: Hainan Daily)
The Port of Yangpu is a major part of China’s New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor. Beginning operations in September 2020, the Yangpu-South Pacific-Australia route was the Hainan FTP's first intercontinental transoceanic route. As of now, the port has opened three intercontinental routes to the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans.
In October, 2021, the Port of Yangpu saw the opening of a multimodal transport route connecting the Hainan FTP and the New International Land-Sea Trade Corridor. A month later, the Chongqing - Yangpu - ASEAN multimodal transport route was opened.
This year, Yangpu Port opened another two routes connecting with Dachan Bay in Shenzhen and the Port of Khalifa in Abu Dhabi.
Including 23 domestic routes, Yangpu currently boasts a total of 47 trade routes directly connecting the FTP with major ports in China and Southeast Asia, as well as linking it with West Asia, Indian Ocean, Oceania, West Africa, and South America.
With the increasing number of trade routes in the first half of this year, the container throughput in Yangpu has increased 11.26% to 1,015,200 TEU. Fuelling the province’s import and export trade, Yangpu has—over the past six months—helped Hainan's total value of import and export trade in goods climb by 13.8% year-on-year to 130.44 billion yuan ($18 billion).
