East China's Shandong province issued an action plan on March 3 to transform it into a powerful maritime province, and Shandong Port Group (SPG), the world's largest port conglomerate in terms of cargo capacity, is expected to continue growing rapidly in the coming years.

Shandong will enhance the modern shipping and port services of its ports. A complete system for collection, shipment and distribution will be built in the province, and efforts will also be made to promote linkage of the seaports and airports between Weihai and Incheon in South Korea, according to the action plan.

Blessed with geographical advantages, Shandong Port actively implements the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and undertakes other such national missions. It actively synergizes the national strategy of serving the country and the BRI, and taking the East-West two-way economic cooperation and the linkage between the land and sea as its development path.

SPG's cargo throughput surpassed 1.5 billion metric tons in 2021, while its container volumes surpassed 34 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) – up 6.1 percent and 8.3 percent year-on-year, respectively, to place it first and third globally.

SPG has opened more than 310 shipping routes and built 26 inland ports. It also developed 72 combined sea-rail transport routes and saw more than 2.56 million TEUs of container throughput by sea-rail combined transport this year.

The group has also responded actively to the province's call of "accelerating the deep integration of it ports, cities and industries", and has started the construction of projects related to the integration of ports and cities in Qingdao and Rizhao earlier this year.

Efforts have also been made to promote the construction of smart and green ports in Shandong. The group is committed to innovation-driven development strategy and has achieved remarkable results. SPG cooperated with the country's leading technological companies such as Huawei and Alibaba Cloud, and built the world's first air-track intelligent transporting system at Qingdao Port, making China the first country to leverage air-tracking in its fully-automated container terminal, which was a big move for the group to create a world-class smart and green port.

Shandong Port Group is the world's largest port conglomerate in terms of cargo capacity. [Photo/WeChat account: Shandong-Port]