#New slik road driver

Colombo's South Container Terminal is currently being run by China Merchants as part of a 35-year build-operate-transfer arrangement and 80% of the highly controversial Hambantota deep sea port is slated to be leased to the Chinese shipping giant for 99 years. Some major international investments of China Merchants Port Holdings are the aforementioned consortium with COSCO which has a controlling stake in Turkey's Kumport terminal as well as the building of a new port at Bagamoyo in Tanzania, which is vying to become the largest port in Africa upon completion.Ĭhina Merchants Port Holdings also maintains key investments in Sri Lanka, a key piece of China’s Maritime Silk Road endeavor.

#New slik road driver

“Our development plan mirrors One Belt One Road and this is the primary driver of our expansion strategy,” their managing director, Bai Jingtao, recently stated. With investments in 29 ports around the world, the shipping giant is planning to move deeper into Southeast Asia, Turkey, Africa, the Baltics, and Russia over the next three years. Beyond this, COSCO claims that they are going to invest an additional $533 million in Piraeus, putting the port in a league with Hamburg, Antwerp, and Rotterdam.ĬOSCO currently owns the world’s fourth largest container fleet and is projected to become the top terminal operator in the world by 2020.Ĭhina Merchants Port Holdings, the largest public port operator in China, has been activily extending its reach down the tendrils of the Belt and Road. Many major companies, such as Huawei, ZTE, Samsung, HP, and Sony, have already pivoted to using Piraeus as their gateway to the European market, as the port’s throughput grew from a mere 880,000 TEU in 2010 to 3.36 million TEU as of last year.

Although dock workers at Piraeus protested against this sale, the upward trajectory of the port since being taken over by COSCO is difficult to refute.