In the first 10 months from January to October, the port of Xiamen, Fujian province realized year-on-year growth of 4.19 percent in container throughput, Xinhua reported.

The container business grew robustly during October after growth appeared to reach a plateau over the previous nine months.

In November, the port handled 592,900 TEUs in cross-border trade alone, 10.5 percent more than the same period last year, reported cqn.com.cn, an online news affiliate of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China.

With this current growth trend, the port is well on track to realize the 9.6 million TEUs annual target, in comparison to 8.6 million TEUs in 2014.

A cargo ship loading containers at the Haicang port in Xiamen, Fujian province on Dec 18. [Photo by Wei Peiquan/Xinhua]

During the past few years the shipping sector has faced sluggish growth amid a global economic slowdown, but the Xiamen port, ranked 17th as a container port by the World Shipping Council, managed to increase international trunk shipping lines, with the founding of the Xiamen Container Terminal Group.