A Visit to Qingdao’s Automatic Dock and CIQ Cotton Inspection Laboratory

On 21st, June, a group of 41 visitors including foreign delegates from 13 countries and domestic ones, from 2019 China International Cotton Conference organized by China Cotton Association (CCA) paid their visit to the Qingdao dock and bonded area, to get a glimpse of the fully automatic container operation terminal and Qingdao national import cotton inspection key laboratory.

On the automatic dock of Qingdao Xinqianwan, visitors were given a brief introduction of the dock, watched a film of it, and then climbed to the view platform to watch the fully automatic container operation on site. This dock was open for commercial purpose for the first time on 11th May, 2017, and was the first fully automatic container dock in Asia with complete unmanned operation. Only a few staff controls the overall container transportation and operation with remote control at backstage. The operation efficiency improved from 26.1 container/hour at the beginning to 33.1 container/hour now, 50% higher than similar docks in the world. 

After visiting the astonishing dock, visitors went to the Qingdao CIQ national import cotton inspection key lab, and listened to the introduction on import cotton from Qingdao port and its Customs clearance process, import cotton inspection process and cotton quality analysis from different countries. They also had the chance to have a look on the whole process of import cotton inspection and asked questions at their concern. According to staff of Qingdao Customs, Qingdao is the NO.1 cotton import destination in China, and had received 70,000 TEU containers (around 650,000 tons) of cotton in 2018, over 40% of the national total. These cotton mainly come from Australia, US, Brazil, Uzbekistan, India, Sudan and Mexico. In 2018, Qingdao CIQ inspected 2,635 batches of cotton, stands for the weight of 791,000 tons, 57.73% of the national total, from 25 countries and regions around the world.