(Yicai Global) Dec. 26 -- The Port of Ningbo-Zhoushan in China's eastern Zhejiang province just south of Shanghai accepted delivery yesterday of the No. 6 berth of the Meishan Port Area. 

This event inaugurates the Meishan complex's status as China's largest container port, Zhejiang Daily reported today.

Construction of the berth started in June 2016 and concluded at the end of May. Its platform is 544 meters long and 59 meters wide, with a designed capacity of 200,000 tons. It connects to land by a 430 meter-long and 22 meter-wide bridge, the Ningbo Port Administration said.

The Meishan Port Area plans to build No. 6 to No. 10 berths based on its original five amid the steady increase of container throughput and the increasing size of transport vessels -- including two 200,000-ton and three 150,000-ton berths -- with an investment of CNY7.8 billion (USD 1.1 billion).

The No. 7 to No. 10 berths are still under construction, and the length of the entire port frontage will be 2,150 meters after completion of all berths. The annual container throughput of the Meishan Port Area will exceed 10 million twenty-foot equivalent units, or nearly half of that of the entire Ningbo-Zhoushan Port system.

The Ningbo-Zhoushan Port now has 19 100,000-ton-plus container berths and has moored 100 container ships of 20,000 TEUs and above as of Nov. 20, 5.3 times of that in the same period of last year.

Editor: Ben Armour