Eight South Korean port areas to grow by 2030

This article by Xiaolin Zeng originally published on Fairplay.IHS.com.

South Korea’s Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (MOF) has said eight South Korean ports will get a total of more than 30 million m² of additional space for port-focused activity by 2030. It comes as part of a broader development plan to enhance the country’s industrial and logistics infrastructure.

The ministry said on 1 January that the new land at the ports – Busan, Incheon, Gwangyang, Mokpo, Masan, Pyeongtaek-Dangjin, Pohang, and Ulsan – would enhance their cargo handling capacity by 10 million tonnes annually.

The expansion will be in phases, from 17.22 million m2 in 2020 to 25.47 million m2 in 2025 to 30 million m2 in 2030.

The latest port expansion project is the third, coming after those announced in 2006 and 2012. With the most recent project, the government is focused on securing manufacturing and logistics-related land to improve the overall investment climate.

The MOF said the KRW1.5 trillion (USD1.41 billion) project would generate as much as KRW11.9 trillion-worth of goods and services and create 87,000 new jobs.

The ports concerned each handle at least 10 million teu of containers every year and have berths that are at least 240 m long to accommodate vessels that are at least 2,000 teu in capacity. The MOF took the characteristics of each port into consideration when considering them for the project.

Busan, already the busiest transhipment port in northeast Asia and set to replace Hong Kong as the world’s second-busiest transhipment port, would consolidate its status with more dedicated space. By 2030, when the entire project is completed, Busan will have an area of 84.57 million m2 associated with the port.

The MOF said businesses that ship cargoes through Busan need complex logistics and manufacturing facilities.

By the time the project is completed, the port-related areas will be 7.57 million m2 for Incheon, 5.87 million m2 for Pyeongtaek-Dangjin, 3.98 million m2 for Gwangyang, and 1.51 million m2 for Ulsan.