PROFILE ■ ■ ■
Zhoushan champion Jason Jiang meets the chairman of Herun Group, a diverse conglomerate with big fleet plans
O
nce home to a sleepy fishing community the archipelago of Zhoushan off Ningbo is nowadays a fast emerging shipping and trading hub. Following a series of favourable government policies, the development of Zhoushan Archipelago New Area has been gaining momentum. Traders and shipping companies in the bulk and LNG sectors have been rushing to choose the treasure island as their hub. Zhoushan-headquartered Herun Group, a large scale multi-sector private enterprise with businesses in grain and oil processing, logistics, energy, real estate as well as ship repair, is developing a grain and oils distribution hub in the new development area. The group signed shipbuilding contracts with Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding in October for the construction of four 180,000 The detailed plan includes develdwt capesizes scheduled for delivery in oping a coastal logistics chain from 2016. “The construction of large capacity bulk- Yingkou and Tianjin in the north to Zhuhai and the Beibu Gulf in the south, ers will optimise the capacity structure of the group and lower shipping costs,” says Yu using Zhoushan as a hub, and developing a Yangtze river logistics chain from Songbo, chairman of Herun Group, adding Zhenjiang in the east to Wuhan in the that none of the 21 vessels in its current centre of the country and further west to tanker-dominated fleet is over 50,000 dwt. Chongqing and Chengdu. According to Yu, Herun Group is going Currently the projects in Zhenjiang to develop a grain shipping fleet with a total and Wuhan have been completed and are capacity of 4m dwt and a new international expected to start operations by the end of grain shipping industrial chain in the next this year. The group has also signed investten years in accordance with the development deals in Tianjin, Yingkou, Zhuhai, ment plans of the Zhoushan Archipelago Beibu Gulf and Chengdu, with plans to start New Area. operations in these locations in three years. “We will take advantage of the policy Long-term plans also include developsupport from the government and connect ing dryports in cities including Guiyang, the domestic market with the international Kunming, Nanchang and Hefei, Yu reveals. market. We will invest around RMB30bn in Yu is well aware of the current trend the next three to five years to build a network of cargo owners estabwith Zhoushan as the lishing their own fleet, headquarters and developsomething he strongly ing more than 10 bases advises against. He cites along the Yangtze river COFCO, China’s largest and establish an industrial grain trader as a classic chain with the combinaProjected outlay by case in point. COFCO tion of grain processing, Herun Group in the had to sell all its shipping shipping, warehousing and coming five years assets nine years ago as trading,” Yu says.
$4.92bn
the vessels were losing too much money. Yu has been promoting the integration between cargo owners and private shipping companies in China through mergers, restructuring and joint ventures. Herun Group’s subsidiaries include Zhoushan Zhonghai Cereals And Oils Industry Co, a major grain and oils trading company in the region and Zhoushan Putuo Oils Transportation & Trade Co, which runs China’s largest professional vegetable oil shipping fleet and occupies around 80% of the market share in the country.
NEED TO KNOW NEED TO KNOW
HERUN GROUP HEADQUARTERED IN Zhoushan Herun is a private enterprise with businesses in grain and oil processing, logistics, energy, real estate as well as ship repair. Plans to build a 4m dwt strong bulk fleet to go alongside its strong vegetable oil shipping set up.
SINOSHIP winter 2013
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