Shandong Shipping Corp signed tanker charter contracts on Tuesday with Royal Dutch Shell Plc to provide shipping and logistic services for the European company's oil and chemical products around the world.

The deal was reached in Jinan, capital city of East China's Shandong province. It involves eight 50,000 dead weight ton tankers.

With the move, total shipping capacity of ships run by Shandong Marine Group reached 9.43 million DWT, ranking the company third in the shipping sector in China, said Bao Jianying, chairman of Shandong Marine Group, the controlling shareholder of SDSC.

SDSC is a State-owned company founded in 2010 with a registered capital of 3 billion yuan ($422.7 million). The number of ships operated by the company grew to 72 currently from only one in 2010, a sign of the rapid growth of the firm's business. The capacity of ships operated by SDSC in the last year rose 36.05 percent compared with the level in 2017.

Statistics showed the gross income of SDSC in 2018 reached 6.2 billion yuan, a report by the China Business Network said.

More than two-thirds of the world's trade is shipped and over 90 percent of the total export and import volume generated in China is completed by shipping.

The Belt and Road Initiative has brought opportunities to the shipping industry, said SDSC Chairman Yu Bing. More than 3 billion people in more than 60 countries and regions are involved in the BRI, presenting huge potential in economic development, Yu said.

"Connections among these countries and regions have generated increasing demands for the international shipping industry," said Yu.

He said SDSC is integrating the resources of cargo owners, financial organizations and ship builders to develop the industry.

SDSC also signed on Tuesday cooperation agreements with ICBC Financial Leasing Co Ltd, DNV GL(Det Norske Veritas Germanischer Lloyd), China Classification Society and Bunge Ltd.

zhaoruixue@chinadaily.com.cn

Shandong Shipping employees unload products at a port in Tianjin. Zhang Ke / For China Daily