Guo Fu Hai Credit: Cosco Shipping
China’s Nanjing port has taken another step towards its ambition of scaling up from being a river port to offering deep-sea container services.
Cosco Shipping Lines has started a direct liner service between Nanjing and North Africa, using the newly built general cargo ship Guo Fu Hai.
On Friday, the 79,800 dwt Guo Fu Hai, which can carry up to 2,970 teu, filled just over half its capacity at Nanjing’s Longtan Container Terminal. Cargoes included machinery and vehicles.
This was the largest container loading at Longtan to date, as only around 20 international container routes are connected to Nanjing, and these are all intra-Asia services.
This is Guo Fu Hai‘s maiden voyage and the ship will sail on to Ningbo and Hong Kong, before arriving in Egypt’s Port Said and Libya’s Benghazi port in around 20 days.
In recent years, container transport from Nanjing has continuously made breakthroughs. In December 2024, the port saw its first container ship voyage to the west, when the 2,526 teu Honwell departed for Russia’s St Petersburg port. In August last year, the same ship fulfilled the first container shipment from Nanjing to Europe, via the Northern Sea Route.
In 2025, Nanjing’s container volumes crossed the 4m teu mark for the first time. By 2035, Nanjing hopes to handle 6.3m teu annually.
Port officials said the departure of Guo Fu Hai tests Nanjing’s capacity for navigation, berthing, and operational support for ocean-going vessels, and also indicates its evolution from primarily being a transhipment conduit for hinterland cargoes to Shanghai and Ningbo.
Cosco Shipping Lines’ Jiangsu branch’s operations manager Wang Jianping said: “With this route, cargo sources from nearby areas like Anhui, Zhenjiang, and Yangzhou that were previously transhipped to Shanghai port can also be barged to Nanjing for export, saving transportation costs for enterprises.”
Mr Wang calculated that, on average, each container could save about CNY1,000 ($149) in transport, customs declaration, inspection and other costs.
Check out today’s News in Brief podcast featuring Stephanie Loomis, Noatum Logistics, talking about the Transpacific.