China News Service, Beijing, May 11 (Zhang Wenhui) In May, the Bohai Bay coast is breezy and scenic, with clear waters and blue skies. China News Service visited Guoneng Huanghua Port Co., Ltd. (referred to as Huanghua Port) and saw at the construction site of the Phase V Coal Terminal that piles are being driven into the sea, silos stand in clusters, and builders are striving to overcome difficulties. Today’s Huanghua Port has long shed the label of “forbidden land for port construction,” growing from an obscure small port into a benchmark for China’s coal port transformation.
Who would have thought that thirty years ago, this was still a barren beach, with silty and muddy coasts deemed by the industry as “forbidden land for port construction”? In 1997, Huanghua Port broke ground, and in 2001, it was successfully put into operation, completely breaking the industry curse and creating a port construction miracle that shocked the industry. After 12 years of continuous construction, by 2013, Huanghua Port had fully completed Phases I to IV of the coal terminal, building 17 coal berths, 4 bulk cargo berths, and 1 oil product terminal, officially shouldering the era-defining mission of “transporting coal from west to east and from north to south,” becoming a modern comprehensive energy port focusing on coal while accommodating multiple business types.
Today, Huanghua Port’s operational performance continues to rise. For three consecutive years, the port’s cargo throughput and coal outbound volume have achieved positive growth, with coal outbound volume accounting for about 30% of China’s total “coal transport from north to south.” Since the port’s opening, the cumulative coal outbound volume has exceeded 3.26 billion tons, and non-coal business has surpassed 130 million tons. Coal outbound volume has led the country for seven consecutive years and has remained stable at over 200 million tons for six consecutive years, providing solid energy supply guarantees for regions such as the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, becoming a “stabilizer” and “ballast stone” for national energy security.
In ten years, “coal port” transformed into “beautiful port”
From a “coal black” terminal to a “garden-style port,” how did Huanghua Port achieve this ecological transformation?
“In the past, when you mentioned a coal port, it meant coal dust flying everywhere and sewage flowing freely; everyone called us ‘coal black.’ Over the past ten years, we have turned the ‘coal port’ into a ‘beautiful port,’ completely shedding the pollution label.” Han Shihong, who has worked at Huanghua Port for 14 years, has witnessed this transformation firsthand. In 2016, Huanghua Port’s self-developed essential long-lasting dust suppression system for the rotary car dumper was successfully tested, followed by a series of technological achievements such as the “belt conveyor washing device” and “stacker boom sprinkler technology,” building a complete essential long-lasting dust suppression system that reduces dust concentration in the port area to just 10% of the national standard value.
Ecological governance and economic benefits have achieved a win-win situation. Huanghua Port built a coal dust cake-making workshop, collecting coal dust and coal sludge from coal-bearing wastewater to press into cakes and return them to the stockpile, recovering about 25,000 tons of coal dust annually, increasing sales revenue by over 8 million yuan. The original garbage dump and wasteland were transformed into a 700,000-square-meter “Two Lakes and Three Wetlands” area, with a water storage capacity of 1.2 million cubic meters, enabling the recycling of rainwater, coal wastewater, and ballast water. The port’s industrial water is largely self-sufficient, saving 4 million cubic meters of fresh water annually. Currently, the port area’s green coverage rate reaches 35.6%, with about 1.1 million square meters of green space built. In 2019, it became China’s first coal port to be rated as an AAA-level industrial tourism scenic spot and was approved as a national “Two Mountains” practice innovation base, becoming the first port industry unit in the country to receive this honor.
“Smart genes” drive port transformation and upgrading
The transformation is not limited to ecology but extends to profound changes in intelligence. Relying on key technologies such as automatic control, artificial intelligence, and 5G+Beidou, Huanghua Port has become the world’s first fully automated coal port. Yard storage capacity and loading efficiency have both increased by 10%. Frontline operators moved from single-machine cabs over ten meters high into spacious and bright production control centers. The operation mode upgraded from “one person, one machine, one supervisor” to “one person controlling multiple process lines and multiple devices,” significantly reducing labor intensity, with per capita operational efficiency and per capita net profit ranking first in the industry. In 2024, Huanghua Port released the first independently developed intelligent production operating system for coal terminals, CE-TOS, with 100% domestically produced core systems, injecting a “Chinese chip” into the intelligent development of the port.
As a key support for future development, the Phase V Coal Terminal, which started full construction in March 2025, is being built to world-class standards as a smart, green, and modern coal terminal. The project includes 18 new coal storage silos, each with a capacity of 30,000 tons, and four 70,000-ton coal loading berths, adding 540,000 tons of storage capacity and an annual throughput capacity of 53.1 million tons. The project incorporates “smart genes” and green concepts, with an intelligent construction platform enabling real-time data monitoring of the entire construction process, integrating 6 categories and 16 types of green technologies, and being selected as a demonstration project by the National Development and Reform Commission. Currently, the overall project progress exceeds 42%, and a world-class coal terminal integrating intelligence, greenness, and efficiency is rapidly rising.
Today’s Huanghua Port is accelerating its transformation from a single coal hub to a comprehensive logistics center, striving to build a multifunctional, comprehensive large port. In the past three years, non-coal transport volume has totaled 38.26 million tons, adding 7 new cargo types such as wheat and gravel. It has挂牌 three inland dry ports, opened routes such as the Xiong’an “highway-sea intermodal transport” and Ningxia “sea-rail intermodal transport,” launched multiple container shipping routes, created a two-way channel for “coal transport from north to south and mineral transport from south to north,” and steadily advanced the construction of a foreign trade port.
From breaking the curse of “forbidden land for port construction” to achieving a comprehensive leap in multifunctionality, comprehensiveness, and modernization, the transformation of Huanghua Port is a vivid microcosm of the transformation and upgrading of China’s port industry. Today, this hub port on the west coast of the Bohai Bay is fully leveraging its geographical advantages, deeply integrating into major national strategies, demonstrating new responsibilities in serving the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Belt and Road Initiative, and steadily advancing towards becoming a world-class international trade port. (End)
