The Hindu Business Line : Traffic throughput up in Vizag port

Kolkata March 8 Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT) hopes to handle a little less than 57 million tonnes (mt) of traffic in 2006-07 compared with 55.8 mt handled in 2005-06. VPT, thus, is set to emerge as the country's largest cargo-handling port for seventh year in succession. Till now, the throughput has been 51.81 mt compared with 51.38 mt in the corresponding period of 2005-06, or up by 4.43 lakh tonnes (lt).

"The jump in traffic throughputs has been achieved despite the hit we took during the year on two fronts, namely, iron ore exports and coal imports," Mr K. Ratna Kishore, Chairman, VPT, told Business Line over phone from Visakhapatnam. The drop in iron ore export, as he pointed out, was about 2.3 mt and that in coal import, covering both coking coal and steam coal, nearly eight lt. The thermal coal for coastal shipment too, was down by 2.8 lt. The drop in iron ore exports was partly made up by the rise in coastal shipments of pellets by Essar by 1.1 mt, he said.

VPT, according to its Chairman, posted significant improvement in the handling of crude — so far up by about 1.7 mt at 8.6 mt. "The transhipment crude traffic, so far 3.3 mt as compared to four mt in the same period last year, has been of great help and we have started handling VLCCs (very large crude carriers) recently," he said.

Fertilisers import at 2.58 mt so far against the target of 2.6 mt for the whole year too, had been significant. The throughputs of other cargoes were up by about half a million tonnes.

In terms of other parameters also, the port performed better than last year. Thus, average turnaround time dropped to 3.72 days from 3.93 days in the last year and the output per ship berth day improved to 10,584 tonnes (10,287 tonnes). The port recently navigated Panamax vessel into the inner harbour and from April 1, Panamax vessel requiring 11-metre draft would be handled at six berth including two BOT berths.