Longmen Port, located in Wenling, a county in Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province, sees a 6.5 percent year-on-year increase in the first five months of this year. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Longmen Port, located in Wenling, a county in Taizhou, East China's Zhejiang province, saw a 6.5 percent year-on-year increase in throughput in the first five months of this year, local media reported on June 18.

The port delivered 23,668 20-foot equivalent units (TEU) of containers, a year-on-year increase of 7 percent, and 612,000 tons of bulk cargo, a 6.6 percent increase year-on-year, from January to May.

Longmen Port has been severely affected by the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak in February and March, seeing a sharp decline in business.

Zhejiang Longmen Port Co Ltd has taken a series of measures to optimize port service and mitigate the effects of the epidemic on the port.

Xu Li, vice-general manager of the company, said that the company sent representatives to local companies to learn about their needs and encourage them to use water transport instead of land transport.

Xu noted that the company has also changed departure times for ships each week according to changes in the market.

To meet the cargo delivery needs of Wenling and Wenzhou, Longmen Port Co launched another shipping route between the two cities on April 2, and the number of ships traveling between the two has increased from four to six per week.

Since May, the cargo load rate of each ship at Longmen Port reached 98 percent, a record high for the port.

Moving forward, Longmen Port Co plans to help local companies overcome the difficult times by increasing its number of ships and offering discounts to customers that place bulk orders, according to Xu.