China Merchants Port Turns Berth and Crane Planning Over to AI

China Merchants Port (CMP), one of the world's largest terminal operators, is rolling out a "Smart Logistics Suite" that pulls berth planning, crane scheduling, yard allocation and truck appointments into a single AI-driven layer across its global terminals — part of a broader national push to move Chinese ports from pilots to platform by 2030. What it does: the system provides AI-supported berth and crane planning that constantly recomputes optimal sequences as ships arrive late or early — meaning fewer empty crane moves, tighter gang scheduling and less dead time — while built-in truck-appointment booking lets hauliers reserve gate slots instead of queuing blindly. On the ground, that can mean a driver spending 30 minutes in the terminal instead of 90. The bigger backdrop: this sits inside China's state-backed plan to standardise data and AI stacks across ports through 2030, including an AI berth-planning agent that digests schedules, tides and constraints and redraws harbour plans in seconds, layered on a base of roughly 60 automated terminals. Why this matters for ship managers: port-call unpredictability is one of the most stubborn cost-and-emissions drains in the schedule, and the operator holding the terminal increasingly holds the algorithm that sets your berth window. Better berth and crane orchestration is exactly the input that makes just-in-time arrival something you can plan around. The honest caveat: CMP has not published hard turnaround-time or yard-efficiency numbers, and any port tool stands or falls on integration and whether planners and truckers actually trust its suggestions — so watch for measured, before-and-after results from named terminals. [trans.info · China.org.cn]

This story is part of the Maritime AI Digest of 5 July 2026.

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