Nanjing port is set to offer some serious competition for Shanghai in the not so distant future. Early this year the dredging project was completed on the Yangtze river as far upstream as Taicang, allowing the first 50,000 ton container ships to sail this far up the Yangtze. Now, at end of August China’s maritime authorities have launched the extension of the project that will deepen the Yangtze as far as Nanjing.
The huge underwater engineering challenge calls for a dredging of a channel with an effective width of 350 metres, with some sections that are even wider. While this stretch of the Yangtze currently offers shipping approximately 10 metres of load draft, the newly dredged channel shall deepen this to 12.5 metres.
Some 280 km in length, the dredging of the Taicang to Nanjing stretch is estimated to cost ¥12 billion. Completion is expected in 2015 by the end of the “12th Five-Year Plan”, at which time the dredging project is hoped to return an annual economic benefit of almost ¥700 million.
The Yangtze River drains one-fifth of China’s land area and is the busiest navigable river in the world, transporting some 1.7 billion tons of cargo in 2011. The Yangtze River Delta area, defined as the banks of the river between Shanghai and Nanjing, generates some 20% of China’s Gross Domestic Product.
