SIP Bonded Zone and Taicang Port in Aligned Operation

SIP Integrated Bonded Zone will be able to complete loading for shipment at Taicang Port through a single customs formality within the zone, which is to function as a port of exit without river shores, and to save half of the logistic operation time. On June 16, SIP departments concerned and Taicang Port signed an agreement on "aligned operation of SIP and Port", attended by Ma Minglong, Secretary of SIP Party Working Committee.

Since Shanghai Port is increasingly being congested, the customs inspection and exit procedures for outbound goods from Suzhou have greatly hampered the speed of export commodities and logistic cost kept rising. Now, with the aligned SIP and port operation, the functions of port are being extended to the integrated bonded zone, and the zone is regarded as a "virtual stack area" of the port, where import and export declarations, inspection, tariff levy, and clearance will be handled by a single streamlined procedure, whereas in Caicang Port, the goods arriving by land route will be immediately loaded for shipment. Such a mode of port operation has made up for the lack of port in SIP.

Earlier in February, the aligned operation was put into experimentation, and AU Optronics was one of the first to carry out the trial operation. According to the company management, goods from Taiwan would normally take 7 to 8 days to arrive in at Shanghai Port, and another 2 days to be shipped to Suzhou plant, but by taking the route to Taicang Port, the goods can reach the port in 4 or 5 days and be shipped to the plant on the same day as the arrival at the port of entry. The inventory cycle was noticeably quickened and the cost of logistic operation significantly reduced. In addition, at the united consignment center, set up within the bonded zone by shipping companies, enterprises can book the shipment at close quarters on the same day without having to relying on shipping agents of other ports and thus save about three days and the cost of for each container is reduced by 30 to 50 US dollars.

Since the aligned SIP-port operation mode started in February this year, there have been over 40 shipments completed by the route of Taicang to Taiwan. At present, international shipment from Taicang to Japan and Korea can also be conducted by the same mode, and shortly, such an operation will be extended to southeast Asia.

June 17, 2008