Joint venture sets Sri Lankan port buzzing again

Happy to help

At Colombo International Container Terminals, a subsidiary of CMG that builds and operates the South Container Terminal at the Port of Colombo, Chinese and Sri Lankan employees call each other "brother".

Whenever CICT chief executive officer Huang Peng received a phone call from a Sri Lankan colleague, he always started the conversation with "Hello my brother". His mantra became a buzzword within the company, and soon many started to imitate Huang's style of greeting.

Huang's office door is always open, and as CEO, he is happy to deal with his Sri Lankan employees' different requests and questions. "Some are about meals at work and salaries, some others are about family and relationship issues. But I'm happy to help them solve all types of issues," he said.

CICT has 1,500 employees, of which more than 1,480 are Sri Lankan. During the 35-year contract period, CICT expects to add more than $2 billion in revenue to the Sri Lankan economy, bringing in some 5,000 new jobs.

For Thusitha George, the operations manager at CICT, his "best brother" is Zhu Mingwei.

Zhu, who works in the technical department, often helps George solve complex technical problems in his work. As a local employee, George likes to invite his Chinese colleagues to try Sri Lankan black tea after work.

The port was recently ranked the 13th best-connected port in the world by Drewry Port Connectivity Index, a global shipping analyst.

It also won the Best Container Terminal in Asia award in the Under 4 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) category at the Asian Freight, Logistics and Supply Chain Awards for two consecutive years, which Huang said was the result of the joint efforts by Chinese and Sri Lankan employees.

Ten years ago, the Port of Colombo was on the brink of bankruptcy, due to civil war and the global financial crisis.

Colombo residents have a unique habit. When calculating the distance between the capital and other places, they always take the Old Colombo Lighthouse as the starting point.

The lighthouse, built by the country's colonizer Britain, has witnessed both the prosperity and the suffering of the Port of Colombo.

In 1912, the colonial government established the Colombo Port Commission and modernized the port, and by the 1920s, Colombo had become one of the largest ports in South Asia.

Nearly all the trading vessels traveling between Asia and Europe docked at the port to offload cargo. The lighthouse guided merchant ships from Britain, India, Australia and the Far East.

Eighty-four years later, the lighthouse was severely damaged in an explosion, with the country embroiled in a civil war since 1983 that lasted for nearly 30 years. The area where the lighthouse is located has been under high levels of security for 20 years.

When the civil war ended in 2009, Sri Lanka began to revitalize its economy and rebuild its damaged port business. But then, the financial crisis devastated the global port industry.