Shenzhen-Hong Kong’s Rebuilt Huanggang Port Opens with 24-Hour “Co-operative Inspection, One-Stop Release”

China and Hong Kong today inaugurated the completely rebuilt Huanggang Port, the first land border checkpoint to operate around the clock and to adopt the new “co-operative inspection, one-stop release” model. Speaking at the 10 October 11 opening ceremony in Shenzhen, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee and Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress Chairman Huang Chuping called the project a “milestone” for deeper economic integration inside the Greater Bay Area. Under the model, travellers queue once, present documents once and pass biometric verification once to clear both jurisdictions in as little as five minutes—an 80 percent reduction on previous clearance times. More than 200 automated e-gates and 68 conventional counters have been installed, together with dedicated 24-hour lanes for cross-border buses and trucks. The port handles the lion’s share of cross-border commuter and cargo movements: before reconstruction it processed roughly 50 million passenger trips and 1.5 million vehicle trips a year. The new terminal—now the world’s largest single land-port building—has capacity for 300,000 passengers and 30,000 vehicles a day, giving corporates a faster, more reliable route between Hong Kong’s financial centre and Shenzhen’s manufacturing and tech clusters. Logistics operators expect average door-to-door trucking times to drop by up to two hours, lowering cold-chain spoilage risk and improving just-in-time supply chains. For business mobility teams the upgrade removes one of the last bottlenecks in the 86-million-resident Greater Bay Area. Executives shuttling between Hong Kong headquarters and mainland factories can now schedule same-day round trips without worrying about midnight closures. The port is fully integrated with China’s “Digital Travel Permit” app, so approved foreign nationals transiting via Hong Kong can reuse biometrics already enrolled at airports, further shortening clearance. The immigration authorities on both sides have set up a joint command centre to monitor flows in real time and will add “single-window” customs declarations for air-sea-land multimodal shipments next quarter. Companies employing expatriates should brief travellers on the new e-gate prerequisites (pre-enrolled face and fingerprint templates and valid multi-entry visas) to avoid being directed to slower manual counters. Longer term, officials said the lessons from Huanggang will inform upgrades at Lok Ma Chau Spur Line, Shenzhen Bay and the busy West Kowloon high-speed-rail terminus, signalling a broader shift toward data-driven, round-the-clock border management in southern China.