APMT sells share of Xiamen terminal

APMT sells share of Xiamen terminal    APM Terminals, the terminal-operating arm of the A.P. Moller – Maersk Group, said Thursday it has sold a partial stake in a terminal it jointly owns in the Chinese port of Xiamen.
   The operator has sold a 25 percent stake in the Xiamen Songyu Container Terminal, half its share of the facility, to its joint venture partner, Xiamen Port Holding Group.
   'The divestment is designed to optimize APM Terminals assets, and support our local partner in Xiamen to grow in scale and competitiveness,' APMT said in a statement.
   The terminal opened in 2007 and has capacity for 1.8 million TEUs per year. It handled 556,000 TEUs in 2010.
   Xiamen is the largest container port in southwestern China and 19th-largest in the world, with throughput of 5.8 million TEUs in 2010. It lies across the Taiwan Strait from Taiwan and has strong ties to Hong Kong and Macau, APMT said.
   The divestment is in line with APMT's objective to focus its resources on higher growth ports in emerging markets, like South America and Africa. The operator divested a small stake in a terminal in Yantian last year.
   'We are looking at a number of investment opportunities in emerging markets,' Martin Gaard Christiansen, APM Terminals Asia-Pacific chief executive officer, said to American Shipper. 'In China, we will focus more on how to facilitate the growing segment of imports in the future.'