Qingdao City, Shandong Province, will build a new "Tungjiakou Port" off Liangye Bay in the southwest of Jiaonan City, adding competitive edge to its port economy, reported NewsTrak Daily.

Tungjiakou Port, a peninsula in the southwest of Shandong, has a natural coastline of 29km and water depth of 15 to 20m. It is one of the deep-sea ports that are naturally wide enough for the navigation of big vessels.

The existing Qingdao Port in Inner Jiaozhou Bay is near saturation, plagued many times by the problem of overloading.

Tungjiakou comes handy as the area has natural conditions for the development of a coastal or even ocean economy.

The "Qingdao Tungjiakou Port Overall Development Plan" was first approved by the State Council in March 2009. Construction followed immediately in May. The port has total planned areas of 70 sq km, near-port industrial areas of 55 sq km and terminal shore lines of 35.7km, according to the plan.

A total of 112 berths of annual handling capacity of 370 million tonnes will be established, of which three are 400,000-tonne terminals for mineral ores and two 450,000-tonne terminals for fuel oil.

Tungjiakou clusters port-use in four major directions. The north port will focus on handling dry bulk cargoes, general goods and container cargoes; the central port crude oil, fuel oil, LPG and LNG; the south port container and general goods transport. The east port is left for future development.

Tungjiakou Port covers an economic areas of 873,000 sq km. The completion of Jiaozhou Bay Underwater Tunnel and the south section of Qingdao Binhai Highway will give it sea, road and railway connections.

Shandong's four core ports – Qingdao, Tungjiakou, Rizhao and Yantai – are expecting total handling throughput of 1.5 billion tonnes a year in 2020.

International investors, including Hutchison Whampao and Modern Terminals of Hong Kong, are said to be interested in port development. Sinopec's LNG project has already settled in.