China Merchants to invest in Shenzhen terminal

Chinese port operator China Merchants Holdings (International) said on Tuesday it plans to buy a 14 percent stake in a US $954 million container terminal in China's southern boom city of Shenzhen.
The news followed Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moeller-Maersk's announcement that its APM Terminals unit will take a 51 percent stake in a joint venture to develop, own and operate the Shenzhen Dachan Bay Phase 2 terminal. Municipal government-backed Shenzhen Dachan Bay Port Investment and Development Co will own 35 percent of the venture and China Merchants will have 14 percent.
China Merchants said a memorandum of understanding had been signed on the project with preliminary estimated total investment of 7.27 billion yuan (US $954.4 million). It will build four container berths with total designed capacity of 2 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEU) a year.
China Merchant's 27-percent owned unit, Modern Terminals Ltd, has a 65 percent stake in the first phase of Dachan Bay container terminal, which will have 5 berths with a designed capacity of 2.5 million TEUs and is scheduled to start operation by the end of 2007.
Shares of China Merchants surged to a record of HK$38.90 earlier on Tuesday before settling at HK$38.55, up 3.07 percent in late morning trade. They have gone up nearly 21 percent this year as a result of China's strong export growth, outperforming a 9.6 percent gain for the blue chip Hang Seng Index.
ORDERS 2 OIL TANKERS China Merchants Energy Shipping Co, the country's biggest oil carrier, said on Thursday it would buy two crude oil tankers for a total of $232 million.
The company ordered the two 300,000-deadweight-tonne vessels from a state-owned shipbuilder in the northern city of Dalian. It will fund the purchase with proceeds from its initial public offer of shares late last year, and with bank loans.
The vessels are scheduled to be delivered between December 2010 and March 2011, it said. It is the second big ship order announced by China Merchants Energy in two months. In April, it said it had agreed to buy four crude oil tankers for $343 million, with delivery by August 2010.