At 9:30 a.m. on 1 August, Ying Yong (应勇), Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Party Committee and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Provincial People’s Congress, announced that the operation of Wuhan Yangluo International Port Water-Rail Intermodal Container Transport Project commenced, according to COSCO SHIPPING Ports's release.
On the day of the event, Wuhan Yangluo International Port Water-Rail Intermodal Container Transport Project （CSP Wuhan Terminal）made an brand new appearance and welcomed visitors from all directions. The new "COSCO SHIPPING Blue" cranes lined up and the 1140TEU ship " Han Hai No.2 " docked at No. 3 berth in the terminal operation area, fully loaded with cargo. Driverless Container Vehicle (DCV) made a debut. The first batch of containers assembled in the terminal railway operation area.
The integrated layout of port and rail station, one-stop transportation, customs inspection and information sharing at the same yard developed by the project also demonstrated that CSP Wuhan Terminal has opened a new chapter of “water-rail intermodal transport” along the Yangtze River, which has built a modern logistics hub for the collection and distribution of containers, making it more determined and capable of transforming and upgrading the ports along the Yangtze River towards smart and green new ports.
Yangluo International Port Water-Rail Intermodal Container Transport Project provides new opportunities for Wuhan Port, Shanghai Port and COSCO SHIPPING to jointly build a core hub port in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. In the next step, the three parties will jointly promote the formation of a co-port effect between Shanghai and Wuhan, and explore to establish an empty box transfer center and feeder service center in Wuhan Port to further improve the efficiency of connection and realize the "Shanghai and Wuhan Co-port" as soon as possible.
Yangluo International Port Water-Rail Intermodal Container Transport Project connects the China-Europe Express train while connecting the river to the sea, enabling Wuhan, Hubei to create the "onshore" and "sea" silk roads. According to the construction idea of “water-rail connection, water-rail intermodal transportation, river-sea direct, river-side transportation, port and city integration” proposed by Secretary Ying Yong, the project is committed to building the largest water-rail intermodal transportat port in China.
COSCO SHIPPING Ports Limited hopes that Yangluo International Port will make every effort to improve port functions and accelerate to 1 million TEU throughput capacity.
The Yangluo International Port water-rail intermodal container transport project is constructed and operated by CSP Wuhan Terminal. The total construction area of the project is about 852 mu, with a total investment of approximately RMB2.7 billion. It took only one year from the start of construction on 1 August last year to the launch of operation of the port on 1 August this year. The water depth of the terminal will maintain at 6.5 meters all year round and it is planned to be fully completed in 2022, and meet the target in three years- boasting a container throughput of 1 million TEU/year and water-rail intermodal transport capacity of 500,000 TEU/year, which is expected to significantly reduce the “last mile” logistics costs of multimodal transport. The project is planned to be built into a modern logistics collection and distribution center integrating the functions of terminal, container transport, logistics, warehouse, storage yard, CFS, water-rail intermodal transport center, etc.
Here, it is not only water-rail intermodal transport. Here “smart port” technology is being integrated with the largest water-rail intermodal transportation hub on the Yangtze River. The gorgeous Driverless Container Vehicle (DCV) debuted on the site is co-developed by COSCO SHIPPING Ports and Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle based on 5G and Beidou navigation technology. It integrates five major systems including dispatching system and these systems constitute the automatic system of ports’ horizontal transportation. The positioning accuracy of DCV is ≤5cm, and the accuracy of one-time positioning is ≥90%. After the DCVs are put into operation, it can achieve mixed operations with manned trucks.
Composed of “pure electric chassis + sensors” that could drive automatically with no cockpit design, it is the DCV that connects the docks to the storage yard and the railway goods yard, making automatic and intelligent horizontal transportation and vertical loading and unloading at the port possible. CSP Wuhan Terminal fully leveraged on COSCO SHIPPING’s achievements in the construction of smart port. Based on experience in the intelligent construction of CSP Abu Dhabi Terminal and the pilot application experience of first 5G full-scene smart port at Xiamen Oceangate Terminal, it realized the applications of technologies such as DCV, remote control of rail cranes at railway and storage yards, shore crane smart tallying and intelligent gate through the 5G network which covers the whole port area, building the first automatic water-rail intermodal terminal on the Yangtze River.