Domestic distribution plays a fundamental and leading role in the national economy, serving as a bridge linking production and consumption. In recent years, expanding domestic demand, which is essential to ensuring China's long-term, steady and robust economic development, has become the focus of national economic work.

With the establishment of a new development pattern featuring "dual circulation" and the steady growth of national domestic trade, the logistics industry's demands for domestic container transport are growing.

Following guidance from Shandong Port Group (SPG) and capitalizing on the advantages brought by SPG's port-industry-city integration reform, port subsidiaries have made greater efforts to boost changes to transport from bulk cargo transport to container traffic for bulk cargo, which has formed effective connectivity between bulk cargo and containers, thus building new advantages for domestic container growth.

Such a new form of business, namely bulk cargo transported in containers, has become one of the priorities for China's coastal ports, especially serving as an effective approach to increasing the number of domestic containers under the current new economic development architecture of "dual circulation".

From January to September, bulk cargo transported through container traffic experienced year-on-year growth of 38.9 percent.

"Taking the advantages of the Qingdao Qianwan West Port United Terminal Co Ltd as the largest terminal in northern China for paper pulp imports and the Qingdao Qianwan United Container Terminal Co Ltd (QQCTU) whose truck and feeder services reach most areas, our two companies have leveraged respective strengths to develop container transport for paper pulp in such areas as Fujian, Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces," said Liu Qiang, a manager from QQCTU.

Since the launch of this transport mode change for bulk cargo in late April, Weifang Port has optimized its operation model to handle the increased cargo delivered by container traffic. Weifang Port has successfully developed container transport for products including soda ash, gesso powder and kaolin.

On Oct 3, the Meide vessel that docked at Yantai Port completed its unloading operation of 11,000-ton copper concentrate, marking a successful advancement of container transport for copper concentrate.

"This new mode of operation has reduced whole-process logistics cost, satisfying our high requirements for the loading and unloading of copper concentrate," customers have said.

In September, Weihai Port launched container traffic for corn, which allowed it to establish long-term cooperation with customers with annual transport demand for 250,000 tons of corn.

SPG is striving to handle 1 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers via such transport mode change in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) period. In this context, efforts are being made by the group to develop into a regional and special hub port for domestic cargo transport, thus offering strong support for the new development pattern in which domestic circulation plays a leading role as a mutual reinforcement of domestic and international distribution.