Shandong Port Group (SPG) has seen more than 1.8 billion metric tons of cargo throughput in 2024, maintaining its continuous trend of increasing 100 million tons annually.

That was announced at a launching conference convened in Rizhao, Shandong province, highlighting a milestone in cargo throughput at Shandong's coastal ports, particularly the success of SPG.

The event showcased the progress in developing intelligent and eco-friendly bulk cargo demonstration ports within the SPG facilities.

According to the official figures, the container volume at SPG has exceeded 44 million TEUs, marking a breakthrough in growth and providing substantial support for Shandong to exceed a 2-billion-ton coastal port throughput by the end of 2024, securing its position as the leading coastal province in China for the third year in a row.

On the day of the event, phase one of China's first smart and green demonstration port for bulk cargo was established at Rizhao Port of SPG.

This pioneering project introduces a comprehensive bulk cargo handling system that is universally applicable, interconnected throughout the entire process, and fully automated.

Overcoming the challenges of manual hooking and cleaning operations, the system achieves complete automation from unloading to loading, resulting in a remarkable efficiency increase of over 30 percent and tripling the overall labor productivity of workers.

The conference marked the commencement of the Rizhao port-industry-city high-quality integration development fund.

This fund is poised to infuse industrial resources and capital from the Lin-gang Special Area of China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, Shanghai State-owned Capital Investment, and Real Power Capital into Rizhao.