YANTIAN International Container Terminals (YICT) handled 1.43 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) this September, which not only broke the terminals’ monthly throughput record this year, but also set the second highest record in its history, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported.

According to YICT, it has made wonderful achievements since the beginning of the year. On Feb. 1, the terminals’ cumulative throughput reached 200 million TEUs, setting a record of 200 million TEUs for a single terminal in only 26.5 years. YICT handled its first TEU in 1994.

The 200 million TEUs, if connected from end to end, can span the earth’s equator 30 times and the TEUs can go from the earth to the moon if stacked together.

On Aug.11, Ever Ace, the world’s largest container ship, made its first call at YICT, which is the ship’s only port of call in South China. Ever Ace is 400 meters long, 63 meters longer than the world’s largest active aircraft carrier.

The container terminals handled single vessel loading and unloading of 22,398 TEUs on Aug. 19, which not only shattered the record of single vessel loading and unloading volume in South China for the second time in two days, but also broke the nation’s single vessel operation volume record.

Cen Qicheng, managing director of YICT, said that the terminals achieved positive growth in the first three quarters of the year, and the number of shipping routes had increased by 15 percent year on year.

By the end of this September, YICT had 110 shipping routes to major ports around the world, including 64 European and American routes, ranking first in South China.  (Zhang Yu)