China's biggest shipping and ports firm, Cosco Group, will take a stake in the second phase of Shanghai's $12 billion deepwater port and more than double container shipping capacity by 2010, its top executive said on Tuesday.
Cosco is now pondering other port investments, as well as an expansion of capacity to ship 800,000 20-ft equivalent units (TEUs) by the end of the decade compared with 310,000 at the end of September, Wei Jiafu, Cosco's president and chief executive, told reporters.
"We will certainly take a stake in Phase II," Wei said without elaborating on the size of the stake. "And we will continue to expand the fleet. We've already doubled capacity compared with 1998."
The first phase of Shanghai's Yangshan deepwater port, which the city hopes would cement its position as one of the world's three busiest ports of call by allowing the largest ships to berth, is scheduled to begin operations later this month.
Danish shipping company A.P. Moeller-Maersk said Tuesday it would also invest in the second phase of the deepwater port in Shanghai, due to begin operations in late 2006.
Stakes in over 20 ports globally complement Cosco's existing shipping business, Wei said, by smoothing and speeding berthing and loading.
Most of its business remains tied to China - the world's third biggest trading nation - and has boomed alongside an economy that has grown over 9 percent in the past nine quarters.
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