The Hindu Business Line : Looking for fair winds

The Haldia dock authorities are in a peculiar predicament. The prospects of growth in traffic bring no cheer to them. The reason is simple: The dock suffers from an acute capacity constraint. "At more than 130 per cent capacity utilisation as compared to the international optimum norm of 70 per cent or so, growth is neither possible nor desirable for us," Mr Rajeev Dube, Deputy Chairman, Kolkata Port Trust in charge of Haldia dock, told Business Line recently at his office in Haldia.

The concern is all the more because Haldia is fast emerging as a growing industrial hub of West Bengal, with so many new industrial units coming up there and existing units planning capacity expansion. "The new units that are coming would like to take advantage of the port facilities available at Haldia but we, as a service provider, find it extremely difficult to cater to their growing requirements," Mr Dube observed.

The situation has come to such a pass that pre-berthing detention of vessels, at the Sandheads as also within the dock, is substantial, so much so that some of the major users of the dock have started diverting their vessels to other ports. Precisely for the same reason, the traffic throughput at Haldia in 2006-07, it was estimated, would remain more or less unchanged at the last year's level of 43 million tonnes or so.

Traffic projections

Didn't the dock authorities make future projections for traffic well in advance and act accordingly? But then, as it was explained, the job of traffic projection was rather tricky. There was a time when Haldia, Paradip and Vizag, all the three ports, made huge investments on creation of facilities for handling iron exports based on projections about probable Japanese buying.

The promised buying did not materialise, with the result the huge plants remained idle for many years, rendering the investments bad. At Haldia and Paradip, the plants were subsequently modified at additional costs to handle coal for coastal shipments. That was the danger of making investments depending on one customer.

Now the country is experiencing boom in iron ore exports, again due to the spurt in demand of one customer China. How long will this boom last is anybody's guess. Should ports make investments based on the present boom?

In another instance, the third oil jetty was built at Haldia at the insistence of Indian Oil Corporation.

In fact, all the three oil jetties at Haldia were built at a substantial investment to meet the requirement of the public sector oil company. IOC now has decided to bring crude to Haldia by pipeline from Paradip. Which means in stroke, Haldia dock stands to lose about eight to nine million tonnes of crude traffic.

What happens to the facilities created over the years? The massive coal handling plant installed at a huge investment at Paradip for handling coastal shipments of thermal coal for Tamil Nadu Electricity Board is grossly underutilised.

Yet, as Mr Dube felt, it would be foolish not to take note of the need for creating additional capacity and invest accordingly. The additional capacity at Haldia, he pointed out, was being created through several measures, not merely by constructing new berths.

Other facilities

In addition to construction of new berths, attempts were being made to increase productivity through larger mechanisation of operation, improving the navigability of the river through proper dredging, exploring the scope of launching new system of cargo handling away from the docks closer to the sea and improving mobility within the dock by upgrading the roads and various such measures.

Two new berths inside the dock are being built — one of them would be ready for operation next April and the other by October. The commissioning of these berths would not only ease the pressure on the existing berths but also help achieve a rational distribution of traffic among the berths.

There are proposals for constructing two more berths on the river, outside the impounded dock. At present, there are 15 berths, 12 of them inside the dock and three on the riverfront. The productivity of the dock is also being increased by modernising equipment.

The modernisation of equipment could boost productivity by as much as 100 per cent in some berths, it was felt. Thus, four RTGs (rubber tyred gantries) and two RMQCs (rail mounted quay cranes) have already been acquired. There are proposals for acquiring two mobile harbour cranes for the berth no. 4B. Also, the new berths being built would be equipped with latest technology.

Hooghly woes

The poor navigability of the Hooghly river, which causes biggest headache to the dock authorities, defies easy solutions. The River Regulatory Scheme aimed at improving the navigability has been lying with the authorities concerned for the past several years. Also, total dependence on the Dredging Corporation of India is not proving to be of great help. The dock authorities, therefore, have urged the Shipping Ministry to allow it to acquire, either on lease or through outright purchase, a suitable dredger for undertaking dredging near the oil jetties throughout the year. Recently, the siltation at the oil jetties was so severe that they had to be put out of commission for more than two weeks. DCI, too, is believed to have thrown up its hands in helplessness. The ministry has been further urged to constitute an expert committee to examine the rapid morphological changes in the river, baffling the port's own experts.

Operation Sandheads

The Haldia dock authorities are also examining the proposals mooted by two firms, one Indian and the other international, for undertaking transloading operation at the Sandheads, the mouth of the Hooghly river.

The essence of the operation will be this: large bulk carriers, which cannot call either at Haldia or at Kolkata Dock System due the draft restriction in the river, will come at the Sandheads and discharge the cargo in smaller vessels by way of ship-to-ship discharge.

On completing loading, the smaller vessels will either go to Haldia or KDS for second round of unloading. Mr Dube hoped that something concrete would emerge in this regard within a year or so.

The roads within the dock virtually disappear during the monsoon, as a result movement of heavy vehicles becomes impossible. This in turn affects productivity of the dock. A move, therefore, is afoot to step up road and rail connectivity within the dock.

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