Chongqing – the powerhouse of the industrial movement on China’s Yangtze River – has opened a new container terminal, increasing the port’s overall throughput from around 800,000teu to a potential 1.6 million teu.

Chongqing East Port Container Terminal opened for business this week and will have a forecast annual throughput of 200,000-250,000teu.

It is among three container terminals on the Yangtze that the municipality wants to develop. Once all phases are completed, overall annual capacity will jump to 1.6 million teu by 2013.

Meanwhile, cargo throughput growth on the Yangtze River, excluding Shanghai, may exceed 30% over the next two to three years, the MD of Maersk China told delegates at the 2011 Yangtze Business Network conference last week.

Jens Eskelund said that as transportation services on the river became cheaper, more reliable and faster, manufacturing production in inland locations would become more competitive, which in turn created a bigger market for the transportation chain.

“We believe this is a virtuous circle which will provide consistently high growth for quite a few years to come,” he said.

However, he identified a number of challenges regarding the transport of goods on the river, such as the lack of direct services between Chongqing and Shanghai, which means Maersk Line is forced to shuttle containers between Shanghai Waigaoqiao and Yangshan, which adds costs and time delays.

Furthermore, during the dry season, between December and March, fully laden barges are often unable to use stretches of the river where the draught falls below 3.4 metres – in the Hubei port of Jingzhou, for example, the average dry season draught is just 2.8 metres.