An outbreak of the COVID-19 variant Omicron hit Shenzhen recently, didn’t affect Yantian Port, the fourth largest container port in the world.

The port has maintained normal operations staying as busy and orderly as before the COVID flare-ups in March, a representative of the port told Shenzhen Daily.

According to the 2021 annual report released by Alphaliner, the city’s ports handled 6.3 percent of the total 450 million TEUs in the world’s top 30 container ports last year.

Among them, Yantian Port is responsible for more than one-third of Guangdong’s imports and exports, and one-quarter of the country’s trade with the United States.

Yantian Port Group’s Yantian Port and Dachanwan Port handled 3.59 million TEUs in the first quarter of the year, Han Jinbai, director of the Department of Business Management of the company, said in an exclusive interview with Shenzhen Daily.

“The quarterly data declined slightly year on year, yet it still stays at historically high levels. Yantian Port far surpassed our expectations in terms of foreign trade containers throughput,” Han said.

Yantian Port maintained its high containers throughout even though Shenzhen tightened its COVID prevention and control measures, thanks to the company’s rapid response to the pandemic situation.

The company had developed contingency plans during the Lunar New Year in February, well before the week-long lockdown in March. “On March 2, we arranged for nearly 900 frontline port workers to reside in centralized accommodations at the port and adopted closed-loop management to ensure the port’s operation remains independent, stable, and unaffected by the pandemic,” Han also said.

Since the middle of March, all of Yantian Port’s 20 container berths have been occupied with loading and unloading vessels, among which 13-15 are liners. “All port workers have been going all out to ensure the security of the supply chains in the safest and most effective way,” he added.

Meanwhile, the port is also expediting the construction of more berths in its eastern operation area. According to Han, the area will be three automated container berths for 200,000-ton vessels.

In addition to the new daily fast-track route to Hong Kong, the company has also added four new foreign trade sea routes this year. By now, Yantian Port has opened 108 shipping routes. “The routes are very smooth,” Han said.

The government relief policies, which were issued amid the latest pandemic flare-ups, benefited the company in terms of cutting and restraining costs of tax, rent, and social security contributions.

Answering the call of the government, this city-owned enterprise also offered rental reduction and exemption for more than 400 small and micro service enterprises and manufacturers, as well as individually owned businesses, that rent its properties, with a relief of over 57 million yuan ($8.95 million).

(With input from Shenzhen Daily)

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