Chinese shipping giant Cosco is boosting its presence in Europe with the full takeover of Zeebrugge container port in Belgium.

Zeebrugge is Belgium’s second busiest container port, with an annual capacity of 1 million TEUs. APM Terminals opened the Zeebrugge terminal in October 2006 and sold a 24% share to Cosco in 2014. Cosco Shipping and its alliance partners have become the major customers of the port, and have a long-term interest in growing its throughput. Cosco Shipping operates the world’s largest shipping fleet by tonnage.

Hong Kong-based Cosco Shipping Ports Limited, a subsidiary of China Cosco Shipping Corporation Limited (Cosco Shipping), will pay 35 million euros (US$42 million) for the APM Terminals’ 76% stake in the Zeebrugge container terminal. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.

Cosco already owns a stake in APM, so the deal will make it a wholly-owned subsidiary. Under the terms of the transaction, APM Terminals will buy back a 25% stake owned by the Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG), and will then sell this together with APM Terminals’ own 51% stake to Cosco.

APM Terminals is headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands. It is part of the Transport & Logistics business unit of Denmark-based shipping group Maersk.

Cosco Shipping Ports is a co-shareholder and strategic partner in several operations within the APM Terminals global terminal network, including the Suez Canal Container Terminal in Egypt, the Qingdao Qianwan Container Terminal and the Guangzhou South China Oceangate Container Terminal, both in China. In October 2016, Cosco Shipping Ports acquired a 40% share in the deep-water APM Terminals Vado terminal project under construction in Vado, Italy.

Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG) operates the world’s largest container port in Shanghai, with over 37 million TEU throughput in 2016. APM Terminals said in a statement that it will continue to work with SIPG and actively seek new partnership opportunities. SIPG is majority-owned by Shanghai SASAC, with state-owned China Merchants Group as its second largest shareholder.

In May, Zeebrugge was added to container line routes linking it with the Asian ports of Tianjin, Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo and Yantian in China, as well as Busan in Korea, through the weekly Ocean Alliance NEU4 service.

Operated by France-based shipping major CMA CGM, the service was launched on May 16. The NEU4 service, which will deploy 12 vessels of up to 17,859 TEU capacity, is one of six Asia/North Europe services offered by the Ocean Alliance, which began operations on April 1. Its members are CMA CGM, Cosco Container Lines, Evergreen Line and Orient Overseas Container Line. The Ocean Alliance comprises a total of 323 ships.