Chinese Market Continues To Flourish

China’s steadily growing economy over the past decade has been accompanied by sustained improvements in infrastructure to facilitate increased activity and trade across the country. The development of water-based transportation facilities, in particular, ports, terminals, harbours and berths, have underpinned the government’s objectives to broaden economic growth and bring prosperity to inland regions.

The growth in China’s ports sector has enabled the nation to head worldwide rankings since 2003 in terms of total ports cargo throughput and container throughput.

China has over 1,400 ports including both coastal seaports and inland river ports.

Port development has become growingly important in China’s economy and global trade. Iron ore stockpiles at China’s 22 major ports increased to over 72 million tons earlier this month.

It is critical that the impact of inspection and quarantine on trade is minimised.

The Chinese Inspection and Quarantine Service (CIQ), as detailed in our 14th April news story, is continuing to improve the methods and efficiency of inspection and risk assessment at these ports.

Essa has just supplied a second order of robotic quality control and preparation cell equipment to China, this time to the Luojing Port Area of the Port of Shanghai.

This order follows on from the first port project at Caofeidian in China’s north.

The Luojing Port is the world’s first automated bulk cargo terminal comprising a fully automated grab ship unloader (a large clamshell bucket which unloads up to 50 tons of material at a time), a fully automated stacker/reclaimer and fully automated ship loader, all operated remotely from a central control room.

Essa continues to evolve the concept of automated port sampling and quality control systems. In the mid 1990’s Essa supplied robotic sample preparation equipment to a number of iron ore operations in Australia’s Pilbara region. In 1999 Essa engineered their first ship loading quality control robot cells for Hamersley Iron’s Parker Point and East Intercourse Island port operations.
 
Essa recently hosted a delegation of CIQ officials from Shanghai (see photo gallery).
 
The Shanghai CIQ employs 1600 full time staff throughout the municipality and is dedicated to bringing its processes more in line with international practices.
 
Essa is committed to work closely with China’s CIQ offices, in cooperation with their Chinese distributor, Qingdao Shengfang Industry & Trade Co. Ltd (QDSF), to ensure that their advanced quality control systems continue to deliver efficiencies to China’s port operations.