The Hindu Business Line : Not enough ships to load at Haldia dock complex

The numbers
The dock's coal berth was idle for nearly 10 days in December last after completing loading of more than three lakh tonnes in 21 days and for 8.5 days till January 17, as there was no ship.
In the current month so far, the dock handled six coal ships in 8.5 days totalling 1.44 lakh tonnes.

Kolkata , Jan. 18

Haldia dock complex under the Kolkata Port Trust is fully geared to handle more than three lakh tonnes of thermal coal every month for coastal shipment to southern ports, mainly to meet the requirement of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) but where are the ships to load?

The dock's coal berth was idle for nearly 10 days in December last after completing loading of more than three lakh tonnes in 21 days and for 8.5 days till January 17, as there was no ship.

In the current month so far, the dock handled six coal ships in 8.5 days totalling 1.44 lakh tonnes. It took around 1.5 days on an average to load a ship.

"At least two ships were loaded in 1.14 days on an average," a spokesperson for the dock told Business Line.

If the present trend, i.e. 50 per cent berth occupancy, continued during the remainder of the month, the dock would not be able to handle even the volume stipulated in the linkage, he said.

The dock has been given a monthly linkage of three lakh tonnes for the current quarter (January to March 2007).

The apprehension might not be totally unfounded.

Cumulatively, the throughput of theHaldia dock's coal berth so far in the current year falls short of that in the same period of last year by more than a million tonnes (mt) - 1.81 mt so far in the current year(2.84 mt).

In the first three quarters of the current fiscal, the throughput and linkage was low and the dock found it difficult even to handle the linkage volume due to various problems.

During the monsoon every year, coal loading and transportation would be affected. The TNEB too opted for imports. The last quarter of every fiscal would normally be the performing quarter, with various agencies such as coal companies, the Railways and ports all geared up not only to make up the shortfall, if any, in the previous quarters but also to surpass the targets set for them.

"The productivity of our coal berth has been stepped up through better coordination, planning and monitoring and we can now comfortably handle more than three lakh tonnes a month and we have reasons to believe that there is no problem either in the availability of coal at the mines or transportation of it to the dock and we therefore need more ships to load more coal," the spokesperson said.

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