Excerpt: “Chinese investment in African infrastructure is rising, fueling increased trade, particularly breakbulk cargo, between China and Africa and opening new doors for forwarders and carriers.

Among those benefiting is Singapore’s BDP Project Logistics, which opened an office in Beijing last year to better penetrate the market.

‘We are one of the first project freight forwarders to work with these state-owned Chinese companies with their investments in Africa, and one of the largest ones,’ said Elizabeth Parke, managing of marketing and proposals for BDP in Houston.

BDP has been hired for three projects in Africa, and has more in the pipeline, said Jon Leong, the company’s Shanghai-based general manager for China. Leong worked for four years in Libya and Sudan before transferring to Shanghai.

In 2008, China National Building Materials hired BDP to provide logistics for the construction of a $40 million, privately owned cement plant in Ethiopia, Leong said.

BDP shipped cement, steel, and steel structures and plant equipment from Shanghai to Tianjin, China, to Djibouti, and then trucked it to inland Ethiopia, he said.

The project’s volume reached 100,000 cubic meters of cargo, requiring more than 20 shiploads, and was carried on Ethiopia Shipping Lines, a breakbulk carrier, and China Ocean Shipping Co., Leong said.”

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