Located to the very east of China, Zhoushan Archipelago is the place that receives the first sunlight every morning. Part of Zhejiang-Zhoushan Port Group, Zhoushan Port is emerging as a regional petrochemical hub as mandated in an industrial plan and supported facilitation measures. The blueprint sets out a target of building a regional petrochemical industry with a trillion value and has rolled out several measures, such as encouraging foreign large companies to invest and establish production sites, bonded fuel import and bunkering, as well as storage capacity building, expanding LNG businesses, as well as explore commodities derivatives.

With IHS Markit Maritime & Trade data, we observed that there's an obvious stimulus effect in terms port callings (of tankers), crude oil and other liquid bulk inbound shipments and STS bunkering activities, as well as import trade of the related commodities into the region, which reflects the growing prosperity.

This year, while the world is in the midst of uncertainty and port businesses are largely damaged, Zhoushan Port still performed outstandingly, partly owing to the increase of petroleum imports, appearing like dawn in the darkness.

Source: IHS Markit Commodities at Sea

Positive developments are reflected in more vessels (tankers) callings, with more berth and terminal involved in receiving tankers, as well as the arrival of upsized tankers. Regional imports (Zhejiang Province) and the port-level arrival of Petro/Chemical Commodities are growing rapidly. With real-time cargo flow trade and traffic moving in tandem. This will stimulate port business and the local industries prosperity, downstream and upstream chain. With many shipyards, it attracts the scrubber fitting business from shipping companies, which facilitates the ESG and sustainable initiative - the scrubber fitted rate is competitive but there's further space to benchmark world leading hubs.

Yet, there's still a way to go if Zhoushan aims to benchmark the world's leading bunkering points, in terms of efficiency, transparency and standards.

With ongoing developments, and long-term sustainable goals, businesses and policy makers may keep tracking the growth and competitiveness to support investment and policy-making decisions, with multi-dimension and real-time data and benchmarking.

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Posted 05 November 2020 by Yingzhi Zhang, Shipping Solution Specialist, S&P Global Commodity Insights