Li Ka-shing’s empire, Wharf play an outsize role at Hong Kong’s container port

The Kwai Tsing Container Terminal in Kowloon is effectively controlled by five companies and responsible for roughly 80 per cent of the container traffic that enters Hong Kong each year.

On Thursday, the Hong Kong Competition Commission said that it would investigate a newly formed alliance between four of the operators in which they would jointly operate and manage 23 of the 24 berths at the port. The alliance was announced on Tuesday night.

In its announcement on Tuesday, Cosco Shipping Ports said the Hong Kong Seaport Alliance would allow the companies to operate their facilities in Hong Kong in a “more cost effective and efficient manner,” particularly in light of strategic alliances that have been formed between some of the world’s largest shippers in recent years and the use of ever larger container ships.

Goodman DP World, a joint venture of Goodman Hong Kong Logistics Fund and the Dubai-based port operating giant DP World, was the only operator not to join the alliance. It controls one berth, but also has the largest warehouse storage area on site, accounting for 620,000 sq m.

The container terminal has the capacity to handle the equivalent of 21 million twenty-foot shipping containers a year. It handled the 16.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) in 2017, according to the Hong Kong Container Terminal Operators Association.