Companies Align to Form Taipei Port Consortium

Taiwan's Evergreen Marine forged an alliance with three local counterparts on Friday to bid jointly for a container port project in Taipei Harbor.

Evergreen Marine, Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp., Wan Hai Lines and Evergreen Transport said in a joint statement they would set up the Taipei Port Consortium to issue the bid.

Evergreen Marine and Evergreen Transport, members of the giant Evergreen transportation conglomerate, would own a combined 50 percent of the new company, which would have initial paid-in capital of T$800 million.

Wan Hai would hold 40 percent, and Yang Ming would own 10 percent, the companies said.

The estimated T$20 billion port project, which would be located in Taipei county, aims to bring its first berth with 250,000 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) capacity into service in 2006, harbor officials have said.

The build-operate-transfer (BOT) container project, which has a designed capacity of 1.75 million TEUs, would allow the operator to run the berths for 50 years before handing it back to the state.

After completion of its seven berths, the Taipei harbor would rank as the third largest on the island, behind the southern port in Kaohsiung and Keelung.