NEW DELHI: India will issue tenders in March for a consulting study on the development of a new transshipment port at Colachel on the Malabar coast on the southernmost tip of the subcontinent.
The port is one of three new greenfield sites being developed amid fears a lack of capacity could stymie economic growth. The other two will be built at Sagar in West Bengal and Wadhawan at Dahanu in Maharashtra, bringing to 15 the number of the country’s major ports as the government works to expand annual cargo volume from 972 million tonnes (1.1 billion tons) presently to 2.5 billion tonnes within 10 years. Colachel will focus on transshipment because of its strategic location and deep draft of 18.5 meters (60.7 feet), according to the Ministry of Shipping.
Meanwhile, data released for the first nine months of the 2015 fiscal year show a marked improvement in levels of productivity at the country’s 12 major ports. Productivity performance measured by three parameters, average turnaround time of ships in port, average pre-berthing time and average output per ship berth day all showed improvement in the period from April to December 2015 when compared with the same period in 2014.
Average ATT was reduced from 2.3 days to 2.1 days; pre-berthing wait time fell from 5.5 hours to 3.9 hours, and average output per ship berth day increased from 12,313 tonnes (13,572 tons) to 12,614 tonnes.
The majority of the 12 ports booked an increase in average output per ship berth day, with Mormugao and Visakhapatnam registering the highest increase of 27.7 percent and 19.6 percent, respectively. A decline in the metric was registered at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, which was hit by a series of labor disruptions, together with New Mangalore and Cochin. At 75.7 percent, 59.2 percent and 45.3 percent respectively, pre-berthing wait time showed a strong improvement at Haldia Dock Complex, Kandla and Visakhapatnam.
The ports of Kolkata, Paradip, Kamarjar, V. O. Chidambaranar Port Trust, Cochin, New Mangalore, and Mumbai all saw an increase in pre-berthing wait time, with increases of 8.6 hours at Mumbai and 8.2 hours at VOCPT.
Kamarajar was the only port that booked a negative result in ATT, which rose to 1.8 days from 0.09 days the previous year. The strongest improvement on this metric was booked by Visakhapatnam Port, which saw average turnaround time reduced by 21.7 percent followed by Cochin at 18.4 percent. The 12 major ports handled a combined total of 447.05 million tonnes of cargo from April to December 2015, up from 433.5 million tonnes in the same period the previous year.
Container throughput, meanwhile, rose 2.2 percent year-over-year in the first 10 months of fiscal year 2015-16, but the growth would have been slightly higher if the largest container handler JNPT hadn’t faced slowdowns due to industrial unrest at terminals across the harbor.
Port statistics collected by JOC.com show container terminals at the 12 major ports handled 6.78 million 20-foot-equivalent units from April 2015 to January, up from 6.63 million TEUs in the corresponding period in 2014-15.
