Fieldtrip!

Yesterday we had a nice fieldtrip to Da Chan Bay, a container terminal in Shenzen which will commence operation some time around December of this year. We had our own chartered bus which brought us from the PolyU to the site. At the border everybody had to leave the bus and walk through a large and very modern terminal-like structure to pass customs. We met the bus again on the other side and continued our journey. On arrival we got a brief presentation by the terminal managers of Da Chan Bay which took place in the temporary administration containers since the final building isn’t ready until November. After that we took the bus again to visit the actual terminal. The whole project is divided into 4 phases of which phase 1 and 2 are currently being realized. Phase 1 will, as mentioned earlier, be ready in the end of this year, phase 2 is just entering construction. The sheer scale of the area is quite impressive and the construction work going on at the terminal and all over Shenzen covers everything in a layer of dust which blows into your eyes when you face the wind.

The technology deployed at Da Chan is state-of-the art and ready for the largest vessels currently in service and anticipated for the coming years. Especially interesting are the double-spreaders: The quay-side gantry cranes are equiped with this latest type of spreader which is able to pick up two adjacent containers in one move. As soon as loadplanning considers this possibility the operators expect to be able to rise container handling capacity by 30% which is really some figure! The yard will be served by fully electric, rubber-tired gantry cranes which are supposed to be a novelty aswell.

After the visit to the terminal we had lunch at a very nice chinese restaurant. As it’s the tradition in China the tables where filled with various kinds of food until no spot was left empty on the table. The leftovers where plenty but the food was very good. Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of it, it was quite a sight.

The last station of the day was a warehouse of the China Marchant Group. They where doing added-value services for a large electronics- and entertainment company I don’t want to name on this blog (same reason why I have not put any photos of this online, sorry). It was a very valuable experience to get an insight into the strong differences between this kind of operation in Europe and in Asia.

Afterall the trip was great and considering everything including the bus and the food only cost us 50HK$ it was unbelievable cheap. Well, the multi-entrance visa to China cost about 50 Euros, but as the name suggests were able and going to use it again in the future. The pictures of the trip can be found here, so take a look.

Slightly late but still a little reminder: Mark and I did a little bit of sightseeing last sunday while Nils was busy accompany his parents on their visit to Hong Kong. We went to the Chi Li nunnery and the attached Nan Lian garden. Both can be entered free of charge and especially the architecture of the nunnery’s buildings is very impressive. The garden is absolutely clean and you see gardeners around the place at any time. Take a look at a few photos here.