Yantai Port, located in northeastern part of the Shandong Peninsula, has taken a developmental leap by relying on reform and innovation in recent years.

Last year, the port achieved goods throughput of 80.88 million tons and container throughput of 1.17 million TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units), a year-on-year growth of 33.8 percent and 68 percent respectively.

The high-speed growth continued in the first five months of this year as well.

"During the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006-10), the rapid growth of Yantai Port's goods and container throughput makes it one of the fastest growing ports among China's coastal ports," said Zhou Bo, president of Yantai Port Group.

According to the 11th Five-Year Plan, Yantai Port will achieve goods throughput of 160 million tons, container throughput of 10 million TEUs, and passenger throughput of 4.8 million person-times in 2010, said Zhou.

In 2020, the throughputs will stand at 310 million tons, 10 million TEUs, and 6 million person-times respectively.

In its development strategy, the port has made the container, bulk cargo, and ro-ro passenger transport as its three big pillars. In 2006, the container throughput exceeded 1 million TEUs, making Yantai one of the top 10 coastal ports in China and turning it into the hub port for domestic container trade in northern China.

As the main passenger transport port along Bohai Bay, Yantai Port's passenger flow per year surpasses 3 million. The Yantai-Dalian train ferry, put into operation last year, has made Yantai Port a transport hub linking the northeastern and eastern railways, with transport volume of more than 6 million tons annually, added Zhou.

Yantai Port relies on the strategic policy of "one center, two basic points and one shoreline" to speed up its development.

"One center" is to build the port's powerful competitive advantage and maintain its sustainable development. One of the "two basic points" is to help Zhifu Bay, the old port district, develop steadily, while the other is to accelerate development of the new area of West Port, making it the "main force" of Yantai Port's development.

West Port is expected to ultimately achieve the enormous annual capacity of 200 million tons of goods throughput and container throughput of 15 million TEUs.

"One shoreline" refers to the scientific, rapid, and orderly control of the northern coastline of the Shandong Peninsula, establishing more "bridgeheads" for the port's development and enabling the port to gradually enlarge its hinterland, making the Yantai Port area bigger.

It will take 5 to 10 years to turn Yantai Port into a third generation modernized port featuring ecologically sustainable development.

The goal is to make it China's coastal hub port and a center for international integrated logistics, as well as an international container mainline harbor, the main transport corridor for the Jiaodong and Liaodong peninsulas, an important petroleum reserve base and a harbor industrial base.

"Yantai port will be built into a comprehensive main hub port," Zhou asserted.

The local government will actively develop the harbor industry and modern logistics operations and enhance the port's core competitiveness by accelerating infrastructure construction.

Through promotion of functional restructuring and overall planning, rational adjustment of the layout of local functions, and allowing the region's advantages in terms of natural resources to have full play, Yantai Port will be built into a modernized main hub port based on the Zhifu Bay, Longkou and Penglai port districts. Its core strengths are expected to be the construction and development of West Port and network-based management.

Zhou further said that Yantai Port will develop a modern harbor industry by its geographical advantage of being located close to the Yantai export processing and economic development zones.

As Zhifu Bay Port District is close to Yantai export processing zone, Yantai Port is speeding up the pace of zone-port combined construction and vigorously developing the harbor's bonded logistics services.

According to the plan, three big harbor industry districts will be constructed over a 26-sq km area to the rear of West Port District, and will include a processing industry, a chemical industry, and an integrated logistics park, accounting for 5.3, 3.7, and 3.6 sq km respectively.

The harbor industrial park will have 200 processing enterprises and port services in three to five years, making the Yantai harbor industry the main force behind speeding up Yantai Port's development.

During the 11th Five-Year plan period, Yantai Port Group plans to build processing and manufacturing bases, develop the coastal economic industrial belt and accelerate industrial restructuring.

Dominant operations, such as in transportation of containers, bulk, oil and chemicals, as well as that of passengers and goods ro-ro transport will be the focus of the port's development.