LONDON: Strong rail connections, growth and projected demand tied to government industrial initiatives is helping the minor, or privately operated, Krishnapatnam Port emerge as a reliable alternative for major mainline carriers, particularly those connecting southern India transshipment cargo and operating on intra-Asia trade lanes.
Much of the current and projected growth is owed to the government’s “Make-in-India” manufacturing and “Sagar Mala” infrastructure programs, which have led Maersk Line to consolidate coverage at Krishnapatnam by making weekly stops at the port on its Chennai Express Service, or CHX, which was previously fortnightly.
The Danish carrier in a trade advisory said “a direct call with increased frequency” is designed to cater to growing demand into Krishnapatnam, where in the first three months of the fiscal year, which began in April, traffic rose 98.6 percent year-over-year to 43,454 twenty-foot-equivalent units, according to statistics from the port. The port’s throughput increased 30 percent year-over-year in fiscal year 2015 to 2016, to 119,000 TEUs.
“This service (CHX) has been upgraded seeing the potential of Krishnapatnam Port Container Terminal and will help the trade significantly,” a Krishnapatnam official told JOC.com. The CHX change starts at the end of the month and the intra-Asia CHX will also discontinue its twice-monthly stops at the nearby Kattupalli port, which were added essentially to circumvent chronic delays at the Chennai port. Chennai has overcome much of its access problems over the past months on the back of new rail services and other proactive measures.
The upgraded service, employing a fleet of six vessels, will now rotate as follows: Qingdao and Tianjin, China; Busan, South Korea; Shanghai and Nansha, China; Tanjung Pelepas, Malaysia; Singapore; Chennai, Krishnapatnam and Visakhapatnam, India’ Tanjung Pelepas; Singapore; Busan and back to Qingdao.
