SINGAPORE, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Commodities trader Trafigura has won a licence to supply bonded marine fuel at the port of Zhoushan, China’s top bunker fuel hub, a company spokeswoman said on Friday.
This is a rare licence granted to a fully foreign-owned entity, making Trafigura one of about a dozen of mostly Chinese entities with such a permit to operate a ship fuel business in Zhoushan.
Taking advantage of the cleaner ship fuel rolled out globally since the start of 2020, China aims to build Zhoushan, an archipelago city in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, into a regional ship fuel hub to rival Singapore as the world’s largest shipping fuel centre.
China’s Zhoushan Port Plans Bunker Hub Expansion
The licence was granted to China-based unit Trafigura Energy (Zhejiang) Co Ltd, the company said.
Top commodities traders Vitol and Glencore have also set up ship fuel businesses in Zhoushan via joint ventures with local partners.
“This is a hard-won licence and the company takes a strategic view of Zhoushan (becoming a bunker hub),” a senior oil trader close to Trafigura said.
(Reporting by Chen Aizhu; editing by Jan Harvey and Jason Neely)
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2021.
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