China Merchants Holdings (International) Co Ltd signed a contract on Tuesday to take 45 percent of a three billion yuan (US$362 million) container terminal project in China's eastern Zhejiang province, a Ningbo port official said.
China Merchants, China International Trust and Investment Corp (CITIC) and Ningbo Port Authority will jointly build and operate four berths on Daxie Island, said Li Linghong, director of Ningbo Port Authority.
Daxie is about 700 meters off Ningbo and is within the city's Beilun port district.
"The project will have annual handling capacity of two million TEUs and is expected to complete construction within three years," he told Reuters on the sidelines of the signing ceremony in Hong Kong.
The port authority will have a 35 percent stake in the project and CITIC will hold the remainder 20 percent, he added.
Shares of China Merchants, a Beijing-backed transport and port conglomerate, eased 1.35 percent to HK$10.95 on Tuesday morning but were up about 13.5 percent in the last three months.
Li said Ningbo plans to boost the handling capacity of its container port to 10 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) a year by 2010 with annual throughput of eight million TEUs.
The eastern port is widely regarded as one of the best natural deep-sea harbours in the world and is the fifth largest container port in the mainland, moving 2.76 million TEUs of goods last year.
Shanghai port handled 11.3 million TEUs of goods last year and is the largest container port in mainland China, and was the third busiest in the world after Hong Kong and Singapore.