The state-controlled operator of Ningbo, China’s second-largest port and the world’s fourth-busiest port operation for cargo-handling, is planning early moves to float on the Chinese stock market. Senior executives at the Ningbo Port Group, which handled more than 300 million metric tonnes of cargo last year, revealed that they are actively evaluating plans for an initial public offering that would bring the state-run operation to market.
The moves come with Ningbo’s business burgeoning, fuelled by global demand for manufactured goods made across the manufacturing heartlands of China, and by the regional industrial plants’ huge appetite for raw materials and components. Last year the value of imports and exports through the port on Heng Zhou Bay in southeast China was put at about $100 billion (£50.4 billion). Ningbo Ports raked in revenues totalling at least 1.5 billion Chinese yuan (£100 million), executives indicated.
With the volume of cargo handled rising by 14.2 per cent in 2006 alone and the port’s container throughput also up by more than 35 per cent to the thirteenth-highest figure for any port in the world, management at the group said that they were eager to bring in private sector capital, from domestic and foreign institutions and businesses, to pay for further development.
“We will open to world investment. We are prepared to go to the stock market next year,” Tong Men Da, Ningbo Port Group’s vice-president and chief economist, told The Times. “We will choose both the domestic and foreign investors so we have a win-win model.”
The moves come with Ningbo’s business burgeoning, fuelled by global demand for manufactured goods made across the manufacturing heartlands of China, and by the regional industrial plants’ huge appetite for raw materials and components. Last year the value of imports and exports through the port on Heng Zhou Bay in southeast China was put at about $100 billion (£50.4 billion). Ningbo Ports raked in revenues totalling at least 1.5 billion Chinese yuan (£100 million), executives indicated.
With the volume of cargo handled rising by 14.2 per cent in 2006 alone and the port’s container throughput also up by more than 35 per cent to the thirteenth-highest figure for any port in the world, management at the group said that they were eager to bring in private sector capital, from domestic and foreign institutions and businesses, to pay for further development.
“We will open to world investment. We are prepared to go to the stock market next year,” Tong Men Da, Ningbo Port Group’s vice-president and chief economist, told The Times. “We will choose both the domestic and foreign investors so we have a win-win model.”