中国沥青进口港口指南 · A Port and Terminal Guide for Bitumen Entering China

中国进口沥青主要在沿海卸货，分北方渤海湾与东北、华东长三角、华南两广及海南三大区域。北方冬季停工、港口可能结冰，须提前排期；华东施工季最长，可沿长江内陆分拨；华南全年施工，但受雨季与台风影响。桶装、袋装可在普通集装箱码头卸货，散装须有加热罐区的泊位。口岸不改变技术规格。

Imported bitumen enters China through its coastal ports, and for cargo-planning purposes that coast divides into three regions that behave differently. The northern ports serving the Bohai Rim (环渤海) and the northeast work to a construction season that closes in winter, and northern waters can form sea ice in mid-winter, so cargo has to be positioned ahead of the season rather than during it. The eastern ports serving the Yangtze delta (长三角) have the longest usable season of the three and the densest container capability, and the Yangtze itself gives a route deep inland. The southern ports serving Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan pave year round, but the wet season and the typhoon season interrupt both paving and cargo work. Cutting across all three is the choice of cargo form: drummed or bagged bitumen discharges at any terminal that handles containers and is melted later at the receiving end, while bulk requires a berth with heated lines and insulated shore tankage and must stay hot from load port to tank. None of this changes the technical requirement — a cargo is accepted against JTG F40-2004 or GB/T 15180 and tested to JTG E20-2011 methods regardless of which port it landed at.

The first is that China is largely self-sufficient in bitumen from its own refining base. Imports are not filling a national shortfall. They serve coastal demand where a landed cargo is competitive against domestic material that has to be moved from a refinery, they serve quality arbitrage when the price relationship moves, and they serve specific project requirements. Any description of the Chinese market that starts from import dependence is describing a different country. The practical consequence for a port guide is that an imported cargo competes at the point of landing: its advantage is coastal proximity, and that advantage erodes with every inland kilometre the cargo has to travel afterwards. This is why the inland distribution column matters as much as the berth.

The second is a technical fact that decides more Chinese enquiries than any logistics question. Naphthenic crude produces naturally low-wax bitumen, and that is the domestic quality benchmark in China. Many Middle East crude slates are more paraffinic and therefore give a higher wax content (蜡含量). JTG F40-2004 caps wax content by the distillation method at 2.2 % for A级, 3.0 % for B级 and 4.5 % for C级, and GB/T 15180 caps it at 3.0 % for AH-70. Since ASTM D946 sets no wax limit at all, the figure is frequently simply unknown at the point of offer. This is the single biggest technical barrier for Middle East bitumen entering the Chinese market, it is a property of the crude rather than of refinery diligence, and no choice of discharge port affects it in either direction. It has to be measured before an offer is built, not after a cargo has arrived.

三个真正的问题 · The port question is really three questions

When a buyer asks which Chinese port to ship to, the answer is never a berth name. It is the resolution of three separate questions, and the regional differences below are simply where those three questions get different answers:

• 什么形态 · In what form does the cargo arrive? Drums, jumbo or poly bags, a tank container, or bulk in a tanker. This is decided by what the receiving end can do with it, not by the port.
• 什么时候到 · When can it usefully arrive? A cargo landed after the paving season has closed is a cargo that has to be stored until the following year. In the north that is a hard calendar constraint; in the south it is not a constraint at all.
• 之后走多远 · How far does it then travel? Packed cargo travels cold and its inland reach is effectively unlimited. Hot bulk binder has to be delivered hot, which gives it a real delivery radius. The further inland the site, the more the answer converges on packed cargo.

三大区域 · The three regions, in one line each

• 北方 · Northern — the Bohai Rim coast of Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin and Shandong, and behind it the northeastern provinces. A wide inland hinterland, a season that closes, and mid-winter ice.
• 华东 · Eastern — the Yangtze delta coast of Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The longest working season of the three, the densest container capability, and a river route inland.
• 华南 · Southern — Guangdong, the Beibu Gulf coast of Guangxi, and Hainan. Year-round paving, no freeze, but a wet season and a typhoon season that suspend work rather than stop it.

Everything below describes that market geography. It does not describe a service offering, it does not state which terminals this desk uses, and it names no terminal operator. Facility capability is specific to a berth and to a moment in time, and it is confirmed by the buyer and the receiving party — not asserted on a web page.

The northern import geography runs along the Bohai Rim — the coast of Liaoning, Hebei, Tianjin and Shandong — and serves a hinterland that reaches inland across the north China plain to Shanxi and Inner Mongolia and northeast into Jilin and Heilongjiang. It is a large market and a seasonal one, and the two facts interact in a way that decides the cargo form more often than any commercial preference does.

季节：北方的施工季是关闭的 · The season closes, and it closes hard

Hot mix asphalt is placed and compacted while it is hot. The mat has to reach density before it cools through the compaction cut-off, and every degree of cold ground and cold air shortens the time available to the roller. In the north this stops being a matter of efficiency and becomes a matter of feasibility: through the coldest months, hot mix paving on any scale is not done. The usable season runs broadly from spring to autumn and is shorter the further northeast the site sits.

The commercial consequence is straightforward and frequently missed. A cargo that lands in the north in December has not arrived late — it has arrived for next year. The buying rhythm is therefore pre-seasonal: material is positioned before the season opens, drawn down through it, and the tail either carries over or is not bought. An enquiry from a northern buyer should state the first intended paving date, because everything upstream of that date — sailing, discharge, clearance and the inland leg — has to fit behind it.

结冰：航行本身也有季节 · Ice makes the sea seasonal too

The northern part of the Bohai, and Liaodong Bay in particular, forms sea ice in mid-winter. In a mild year the effect is marginal; in a severe ice season navigation is restricted, assistance may be required, and schedules slip in ways that no contract clause prevents. For a bitumen cargo this compounds the season problem rather than creating a separate one: the period when navigation is most likely to be disrupted is broadly the same period when nothing can be paved anyway. The planning answer is the same in both cases — do not build a schedule that requires a northern arrival in deep winter.

货物形态：为什么北方偏向桶装 · Why the north leans toward packed cargo

Three separate pressures push the same way here.

• Storage across the closed season. Bitumen in sealed new steel drums, stored under cover and clear of standing water, ages very slowly at ambient temperature; the practical limits are drum corrosion and water ingress rather than the binder. Bulk binder held hot in a tank through a closed season is doing the opposite — it is ageing continuously, and paying for the heat while it does. Packed cargo is simply the better way to hold material through a winter.
• Inland distance. Hot binder has a delivery radius, because it has to arrive hot enough to pump and use. Packed cargo travels cold and has no such limit. A hinterland measured in hundreds of kilometres, as the northeastern one is, resolves toward drums and bags with melting at or near the plant.
• Discharge simplicity. Packed cargo needs a terminal that handles containers. Bulk needs a berth that can receive a tanker into heated lines and insulated tankage, and that chain has to be hot and available at the same time.

标号：北方偏软端 · The grade skew, and why it follows from the climate

Northeast China is an extreme low-temperature environment, and under the JTG F40 climate zone framework (气候分区) that is the winter digit talking. Where thermal cracking rather than rutting is the governing risk, the selection moves toward the softer end of the 道路石油沥青 series — 90# (penetration 80–100), 110# (penetration 100–120) and 130# (penetration 120–140). The acceptance lines that decide such a cargo are not softening point but the low-temperature ductility requirements and the ageing residue block: mass change within ±0.8 % after RTFOT or TFOT, and a retained penetration ratio of at least 57 % for 90# A级 and 54 % for 110# A级. A binder that hardens sharply during plant mixing arrives on the road already part-aged, and in this climate that shortens its life measurably.

This matters at the port because it changes what the receiving laboratory will look at first. A northern cargo that is marginal on low-temperature ductility is exposed in a way that the same cargo landed in Guangdong would not be, and the place to discover that is the load port laboratory, not the discharge port.

The Yangtze delta import geography covers the coast of Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Two structural features distinguish it from the other two regions. The first is container density: this is the most heavily containerised stretch of the Chinese coast, which makes a drummed or bagged cargo unusually easy to land, clear and re-dispatch. The second is the river. The Yangtze is a working inland waterway, and containerised cargo transships onto river and coastal feeder services that reach Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and further upstream. For packed bitumen that is a genuine distribution advantage — the cargo is cold, stable and already in a box, which is exactly what a barge leg wants.

季节：最长的施工季，但雨会打断它 · The longest season, interrupted rather than closed

The delta has hot, humid summers and winters that are cold without being severe. Paving is possible across a long span of the year, and there is no hard closure comparable to the northern one — but two weather patterns remove working days. The first is the plum rains (梅雨) of early summer, a persistent wet spell that takes paving days out of the calendar just as the season should be at its most productive. The second is late-summer typhoon activity, which can suspend port operations as well as site work.

The planning implication differs from the north. In the north the question is whether the cargo arrives inside the season. Here the question is buffer: the season is long enough to buy through, but a schedule with no slack will meet a wet fortnight or a berth suspension and lose it.

标号：主流 70# 的地盘，以及一个必须讲清楚的命名问题 · Mainstream 70# territory, and the naming trap

This is where the most common misunderstanding in China-facing bitumen trade needs stating plainly. In the Chinese system the number with a hash is the nominal penetration, and the acceptance band sits either side of it. 70# is not penetration 70 and it is not a 60-to-70 band — it covers penetration 60–80 (0.1 mm). This is the opposite convention from ASTM 60/70, where the two numbers are the band. The same rule runs through the series: 90# is 80–100, 50# is 40–60, 110# is 100–120, 130# is 120–140, 30# is 20–40. A buyer who reads 70# as an ASTM-style band will mis-specify in both directions, and a supplier who does the same will offer material that does not sit where the buyer expects.

For 70# under JTG F40-2004, the A级 requirement set includes penetration 60–80 (0.1 mm), softening point minimum 46 °C (45 °C for B级, 43 °C for C级), flash point minimum 260 °C, solubility minimum 99.5 %, ductility at 15 °C minimum 100 cm, and 60 °C dynamic viscosity minimum 180 Pa·s. After RTFOT or TFOT the mass change must stay within ±0.8 % and the retained penetration ratio must be at least 61 %. The penetration index (针入度指数) window is -1.5 to +1.0.

两套标准可能同时出现 · Two standards, one cargo

A delta enquiry may be written against either of the two governing frameworks, and buyers confuse them regularly. JTG F40-2004《公路沥青路面施工技术规范》 is the Ministry of Transport highway construction specification, which defines 道路石油沥青 in grades 160#, 130#, 110#, 90#, 70#, 50# and 30#, each subdivided into quality classes A, B and C. GB/T 15180《重交通道路石油沥青》 is the national standard for heavy-traffic road petroleum asphalt and uses AH- designations: AH-130, AH-110, AH-90, AH-70, AH-50 and AH-30. For AH-70 the requirements include penetration 60–80, softening point 44–54 °C, ductility at 15 °C minimum 100 cm, wax content maximum 3.0 %, flash point minimum 260 °C, solubility minimum 99.0 %, and after the thin film oven test a mass change within ±0.6 % with a retained penetration ratio of at least 61 %.

The two are not interchangeable on paper even where the penetration bands coincide, because the surrounding limits differ. Establish which standard the contract runs on before the cargo loads, and have the certificate of analysis report against that standard using JTG E20-2011 test methods — T 0604 penetration, T 0605 ductility, T 0606 softening point, T 0607 solubility, T 0611 flash point, T 0615 wax content by distillation, T 0609 TFOT, T 0610 RTFOT, T 0620 dynamic viscosity, T 0603 density. Where an ASTM method is cited alongside, treat the pair as equivalent in intent and not identical in procedure; on a marginal line, that difference is what turns a pass at one laboratory into a fail at another.

The southern import geography covers the Pearl River delta and the wider Guangdong coast, the Beibu Gulf coast of Guangxi, and Hainan island. Qualitatively this is a high-temperature humid environment — hot summers, mild winters and heavy rainfall — the pattern that a JTG F40 climate zone code of the 1-4-1 type describes. Note that in every position of that code the digit 1 marks the most demanding end of its variable: the hottest summer, the coldest winter, the wettest climate. A mild winter is the digit 4.

没有冬歇期，这会改变经济性 · No closed season, and that changes the economics

Paving continues year round in the far south. There is nothing to pre-position against and no winter storage problem to solve, and the practical consequence is that demand is continuous rather than seasonal. Continuous offtake is precisely the condition that makes bulk handling work, because a shore tank only pays for its heat if material is moving through it. In the north, bulk has to justify itself against a closed season; in the south it does not. That does not mean bulk is available — it still depends entirely on whether the receiving party holds heated tankage — but the demand-side condition for it is satisfied here in a way it is not further north.

季节因素是雨和台风，不是冰 · The seasonal factor is rain and typhoon, not ice

Two weather patterns govern instead. Monsoon rainfall removes paving days through the wet months without shortening the season. More consequentially for cargo planning, the South China Sea typhoon season runs broadly from May to November with its heaviest activity in the middle of that span. When a warning is raised, cargo work stops, vessels leave berth, and operations resume on a queue. A delay of this kind is a normal feature of the trade lane rather than a performance failure, but it belongs in the plan and in the conversation about laytime and arrival windows before the fixture, not after it.

标号：往硬端走 · The grade skew runs the other way

Where the north is a low-temperature problem, the south is a high-temperature one, and the selection moves toward the harder end of the series. 50# carries penetration 40–60 (0.1 mm), a softening point minimum of 49 °C for A级 and a flash point minimum of 260 °C, with a retained penetration ratio after ageing of at least 63 % for A级. 30#, where a project specifies it for heavy-duty or high-modulus base work, carries penetration 20–40, a softening point minimum of 55 °C and a flash point minimum of 260 °C. 70# remains widely used, and in a hot climate the lines that decide whether a binder holds the surface are the softening point and the 60 °C dynamic viscosity — 60 °C being close to the temperature of a hot surface layer in service, which makes it a far more direct rutting indicator than penetration measured at 25 °C.

湿度把粘附力变成第一位的问题 · Humidity makes adhesion a first-order question

A humid rainfall zone means moisture damage and stripping are the leading durability risk — the progressive loss of adhesion between binder and aggregate under repeated wetting, which unravels a mix from within. The point that matters commercially is that adhesion is a property of the binder and the specific aggregate together, not of the binder alone. It is established by testing the pair, it cannot be read off a penetration or softening point value, and a general claim of good adhesion made without knowing the project aggregate has not been measured by anyone. A southern enquiry should be expected to arrive with an adhesion question attached, and the honest answer involves the buyer sending aggregate, not the supplier sending assurances.

海南是一个独立的物流问题 · Hainan is its own logistics case

Hainan is an island, so every tonne consumed there arrives by sea whatever its form. Packed cargo is straightforward — it is a container, and it moves as one. Bulk depends entirely on receiver tankage. What is worth planning explicitly is the onward leg: for an island destination the sea or ferry movement after the first discharge is part of the cargo journey and is exposed to the same typhoon interruptions as the first leg. Treat it as a scheduled stage of the shipment rather than as something that happens after the shipment ends.

桶装、袋装：在普通集装箱码头卸货 · Packed cargo at a general container terminal

With packed cargo, the container is the interface and the bitumen is invisible to the port. The product arrives solid and at ambient temperature inside drums or bags inside a box. Any terminal that handles a 20-foot container can handle it. There is no heated shore line, no shore tank, no pumping at temperature, no compatibility question about what the line carried last, and no requirement that anything be hot at the same time as anything else.

Quantity is established by counting and weighing, which is the most transparent basis available: drums per container, net weight per unit, drum tare excluded from invoiced net weight. The published loading figures used across this site are fixed by the container rather than by the destination — a 150 kg steel drum loads 80 drums and 12 MT per 20-foot FCL, a 180 kg drum loads 80 drums and 14.4 MT, a 185 kg drum loads 80 drums and 14.8 MT, and jumbo or poly bags of 1 MT load 20 bags and 20 MT. A bitutainer carries 20–25 MT.

What packed cargo does is move cost downstream rather than remove it. The packaging is paid for at origin; at destination the buyer pays in de-drumming labour, in the energy and time of melting, and in disposing of the steel. Jumbo and poly bags cut the steel waste problem down or remove it entirely, and meltable packaging enters the mix with the binder. Where drums are used, specify new steel drums explicitly — reconditioned drums are cheaper and are the most common single source of contamination disputes and rejected cargo at destination.

Storage is the underrated advantage. Sealed drums kept under cover and off standing water hold their condition for a long period, because ageing at ambient temperature is slow; the practical limits are corrosion and water ingress rather than the binder itself. That property is exactly what makes pre-season positioning workable in the north.

散装：在带加热罐区的泊位卸货 · Bulk at a berth with heated tankage

Bulk is a different operation from end to end. It requires a berth that can receive the tanker, heated and traced shore lines, insulated heated tankage behind them, and pumping at temperature — and the entire chain has to be hot and available simultaneously. The cargo has been hot since the load port and cannot be allowed to fall out of its temperature window at any point in between. That single requirement is why bulk import capability is far less widely distributed than container capability, and why it is confirmed berth by berth rather than assumed from a port name.

Temperature control at discharge is a two-sided risk. Too cold and the cargo will not pump. Too hot, or hot for too long, and the binder ages while it waits — and the specification records it: the retained penetration ratio after RTFOT or TFOT, minimum 61 % for 70# A级, is the line that shows what the heat has cost. Prolonged high-temperature holding before the material even reaches the plant consumes part of the binder’s service life.

Quantity determination is also different, and it is where bulk disputes concentrate. Instead of counting units, quantity is established from volume with a temperature correction using density (T 0603 under JTG E20-2011), against ship figures and shore tank gauges. Agree the survey basis, the reference temperature and the density figure before loading, not while the cargo is discharging. Add to that tank heel, line heel and the compatibility of a shared line with whatever it carried previously, and the contamination and quantity risk profile of bulk is genuinely distinct from that of packed cargo — lower unit cost, more places to go wrong.

Against that, bulk is the cheapest form per tonne at parcel size, generates no packaging waste, and arrives plant-ready with no melting step. Where a receiver has dedicated bitumen tankage and continuous offtake, it is the obvious answer. Where the receiver does not, no freight saving makes it available.

危险品状态取决于温度 · Dangerous goods status depends on temperature, not on the product

State the condition rather than the blanket claim, because both halves are true. Solid packed bitumen is generally not handled as a dangerous good. Bitumen carried at or above 100 °C is UN 3257, Class 9 — elevated temperature liquid. That is the line that separates a container of drums from a hot bulk movement, and it changes documentation, carriage and handling requirements at both ends. A supplier who tells a buyer that bitumen is never a dangerous good, or always one, is wrong in half the cases either way.

中间形态 · The intermediate options

A bitutainer or tank container sits between the two: it discharges at a container terminal like any other box, carries 20–25 MT, and is heated and discharged at the receiver rather than at the berth. A flexitank arrangement is a further variant of the same idea. Both suit a buyer who has heating and discharge capability but no shore tankage, and both are worth considering when a first bulk-scale shipment is being trialled before any tank commitment is made.

怎么选 · Choosing between them

• What does the receiving end actually have? A drum or bag melter points to packed; dedicated heated tankage points to bulk; heating without tankage points to a tank container. This question is answered first, and it usually answers the rest.
• How far inland is the site? The further, the stronger the case for cargo that travels cold.
• When in the season is it arriving? Ahead of a northern season means storage, which means packed.
• Is this a first shipment or a repeat? First cargoes are better in a form that can be inspected unit by unit and stored if the schedule slips.

收货端的安全 · Safety at the receiving end

Whichever form arrives, hot bitumen burns are the dominant site risk once the material is being melted or pumped. Cool the affected area with clean cold running water for at least 20 minutes. Never peel adhered bitumen from the skin and never attempt to strip it with solvent — the adhered layer is sterile and protective, and removing it removes skin with it. Obtain medical attention for anything beyond a minor contact. The safety data sheet supplied into China must follow GB/T 16483 format with GHS classification under the GB 30000 series, and it must be in Simplified Chinese.

清关：CIQ 已经并入海关 · Clearance, and one thing that is now out of date

Customs and inspection merged in 2018. The former CIQ function now sits inside the General Administration of Customs (中国海关总署, GACC), and any guidance still describing CIQ as a separate agency with a separate process is out of date — a point worth making explicitly, because that outdated description still circulates widely in trade documentation. Petroleum bitumen falls under HS heading 2713.20 (石油沥青), with the full national subheading to be confirmed with a licensed customs broker. Import VAT on goods is 13 %. The duty rate must be read off the current tariff schedule for the specific subheading and origin rather than taken from any general figure, including one on a supplier page.