The Hindu Business Line : Mumbai port to focus on bulk cargoes

REALISING that it is futile to compete with Jawaharlal Nehru Port for container traffic, Mumbai Port, which improved its standing to the sixth position among the Indian major ports in terms of cargo throughput last fiscal, has now decided to focus its attention on break and break-bulk cargoes.

In a significant shift in strategy, Mumbai port will now be sharpening its focus on building infrastructure for handling of break and break-bulk cargoes for the next few years. "While 80 per cent of the general cargo the world over is now being moved in containers, in India only 45 per cent of the general cargo is containerised. Hence we believe that at least for the next 15 years, there will be enough potential in India in the break and break-bulk segment," a senior official of Mumbai port says.

JNPT, which handled two million TEUs of container traffic last fiscal, has cut a deep swathe in the throughput of Mumbai port, which resulted in the latter slipping down the ladder in terms of throughput during the last few years. Now with JNPT having short-listed the successful bidder for the third container terminal (Maersk-Concor consortium) and going ahead with its plans to set up a fourth box terminal, Mumbai port has cottoned on to the fact that it could not compete with JNPT in the race for container traffic. "We will aim for a maximum container throughput of about five lakh TEUs in the years to come and instead focus on other cargo segments," according to the official.

Apart from JNPT's emergence as a major container hub, the poor response that Mumbai port received from private port operators for its proposed container terminal could be another reason for the port to re-work its strategy, sources said.

Mumbai port expects agri-products, including rice, wheat and oil cake, to be a potential cargo for movement in the bulk mode. Also, as movement of steel products cannot be fully containerised, the port expects that this cargo would continue to be shipped in break-bulk form at least for the next eight to ten years. "Such cargoes will hereafter be our major focus area," the port official said.

In fact, in the current fiscal, the port will be trying to attract new cargoes such as salt and cement, while it expects that car exports by Maruti and other manufacturers will grow.

The port's decision to focus again on bulk cargoes is understandable as in 2003-04, the flow of container traffic to the port shrank to 1.96 lakh TEUs from 2.13 lakh TEUs in the previous year. However, with the increase in throughput of non-containerised cargoes, the port could end the year with a total throughput of 29.96 million tonnes, which was 3.16 million tonnes or 11.8 per cent higher than that of the previous year. Last fiscal marked a significant turnaround in the declining traffic trends that the port had been recording till 2001-02.

The port has also realised that to further climb the ladder up by focusing on break and break-bulk cargoes, it has to remove certain major constraints that are impeding its operations. First in its list is the draft problem. "At present we have a draft of 9.2 mts, which is just not adequate for larger vessels to enter. For this, we are planning to utilise the harbour wall by increasing the draft there from 8.5 mts to at least 10 mts in the next one or two years. Significantly, it has been concluded that the harbour wall area, which had been given up for utilisation due to the rocky surface of the seabed, can be dredged," according to the official.

Mumbai port will be floating global tenders for execution of the specialised dredging, particularly after similar dredging work was successfully carried out at Tuticorin recently, where the rock blasting technique was used. The estimated outlay for the dredging project is Rs 300 crore.

The second constraint of cargo evacuation is also being tackled by the port, which has put up plans for having a dedicated road and rail link between the port and the highway.