Liangshan Port, which is located in Jining, East China's Shandong province, opens to shipping starting on April 9. [Photo/jnnews.tv]

The road-rail-water multimodal Liangshan Port in Jining, East China's Shandong province opened to shipping starting on April 9. It is expected to further the city's opening up and bring new vitality to its economic development.

The port is located at the junction of the Watang-Rizhao Railway, an important coal transport route, and the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. It connects the northwestern provinces, which are the country's main energy suppliers, with economically developed areas in the east and will help facilitate the flow of goods, capital, as well as information between cities in many regions.

The Liangshan Port project has a total of 6.8 billion yuan ($1.04 billion) in investment and the first phase of it has already been completed. It now has an annual throughput of 20 million metric tons of goods and the capacity can be expanded to 50 million tons, generating 30 billion yuan in projected revenue after the second phase is finished.

As one of the six major ports along the Grand Canal in China, Jining has made great efforts to develop its comprehensive transportation infrastructure with the aim of building itself into a logistics hub. The city set up Jining Port and Shipping Development Group in 2020 to build a number of smart modern ports.