The Hindu Business Line : Haldia dock throughput at 32.3 mt last fiscal

WITH a throughput of 32.309 million tonnes (mt) in 2003-04 (28.6 mt in 2002-03), Haldia dock not only posted nearly 13 per cent growth but also ranked fourth among all major ports in terms of volume of traffic handled.

The Shipping Ministry had set the target at 31.4 mt. It might be noted that Haldia dock is one of the two dock systems of Kolkata Port Trust, the other being Kolkata Dock System (comprising Netaji Subhas Dock and Kidderpre Dock) located within the city.

The major highlights of Haldia dock's performance in 2003-04 included record handling of 10.378 mt of crude (34.27 per cent growth over the previous year), iron ore at 3.734 mt of iron ore (38.6 per cent), containers at 136,657 TEUs (16.66 per cent) and number of vessels at 1832 (10.16 per cent). In terms of volumes, the growth of the containerised traffic at 2.29mt (1.85 mt) posted a growth of over 20 per cent.

The rail-borne traffic in the year under review was 14.05 mt, posting a growth of 4.85 per cent. The average turnaround time of vessels at 2.84 days (3.02 days), an improvement of 5.96 per cent, shipday output at 8280 tonnes (7531 tonnes) a growth of 9.95 per cent and hook shift output at 490 tonnes (437 tonnes) an improvement of over 12 per cent.

In 2003-04, Haldia dock surpassed the previous bests in regard to cargo handling in a month, vessel handling in a month and the handling of crude, coking coal, iron ore and containers in a month and steel coils and rock phosphate in a day, add the dock sources.