On December 27, Qingdao Port's automated terminal (Phase III) was put into operation. Owned by Shandong Port Group Co., Ltd., it is China's first indigenously developed automated container terminal, marking that China has made a breakthrough in the R&D and construction of automated terminals and possessed a whole set of fully automated control solutions.

Located on the south bank of Qingdao Qianwan Port Area, the automated terminal (Phase III) features two 100,000-metric-ton container berths. After being put into operation, the terminal has a total shoreline length of 2,088 meters, of which 1,652 meters are available. This will improve the terminal's storage capacity by 26% and comprehensive service efficiency by 6%.

Since the beginning of this year, Shandong Port has seen an increase of 32 new routes, 9 new inland ports, and 10 new trains, and the number of sea-rail intermodal containers has risen by 20% year on year. This shows that Shandong Port has played a greater role in influencing and serving the inland regions. As of December 27, the cargo throughput and container throughput in 2023 had reached 1.7 billion tons and 40 million TEUs, respectively, ranking first in the world in terms of volume and scale. This marks another solid step in Shandong's effort to build a world-class port cluster.