The Hindu Business Line : Ports hit by drop in coal arrivals from Talcher

THE sharp drop in the arrival of thermal coal at Paradip port from the Talcher mines of Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd has thrown up myriad problems, not only for Paradip port - for which thermal coal is a major component of traffic - but for other ports such as Ennore and Tuticorin, and Poompuhar Shipping, which is responsible for transportation of thermal coal from Paradip to these southern ports.

The Paradip and Ennore ports together form an integrated coal loading and unloading system created at a huge investment with funding from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The system comprises a loading facility at Paradip and an unloading facility at Ennore. As part of the same system, dedicated coal carriers Gem of Ennore and Rani Padmini have been acquired only for operating between these two ports.

The drop in coal availability from the Talcher mines has led to a situation where the mechanised coal handling facilities in these two ports remain grossly underutilised, with the result that dedicated colliers are getting detained at the loading port, which adds to the cost.

Not long back the mechanised coal loading plant at Paradip handled as many as eight rakes a day (though capable of handling up to 20 rakes a day).

Right now it handles six rakes on average - 5.5 rakes of BOBR wagons and 0.5 rakes of BoxN wagons.

Given a choice, the port would perhaps like to handle only BOBR wagons, which are dedicated wagons and therefore ideally suited for the plant. But that is not possible. The port has to handle some BoxN wagons that are used for evacuating imported coking coal out of the port to meet the requirements of steel plants.

Every month Tuticorin port receives an average of one lakh tonnes of thermal coal from Paradip port. In July, the throughput dropped to 48,000 tonnes.

The ships used for two-port loading, namely Haldia and Paradip, have also been hit.

Earlier, on completion of loading at Haldia (full loading is not possible at Haldia, which being a riverine port has draft restriction) the ships used to come to Paradip for topping up. Now the ship has to wait for long at Paradip as not enough coal is available at the port. All this is adding to the cost.

Meanwhile, the Coal Linkage Committee has stepped up the linkage by 50,000 tonnes a month for TNEB through Paradip, bringing up the monthly linkage to 6.6 lakh tonnes, but the coal companies are believed to have expressed inability to meet the additional linkage in view of the non-availability of coal.