Yantian’s third birth ready

Yantian’s third birth ready Yantian International Container Terminals, on China’s Pearl River delta, said Wednesday that the third berth of its RMB10 billion ($1.3 billion) expansion project will soon start trial operations after passing all of the government’s engineering and port administration inspections.
   YICT, a member of the world’s largest container terminal group, Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port Holdings, occupies an area of 344 hectares with 12 deepwater container berths.
   The first two berths from the expansion project started operations last September and with the third berth, the project has a quay length of 1,216 meters (3,990 feet) and a depth alongside of 16 meters (52.5 feet).
   Another three berths are due to be completed by the end of 2009 with the entire project finished the year after.
   In March, four new shipping services started calling at YICT, bringing the total number of services calling there to 79.