The Hindu Business Line : ABG Kolkata Container plans freight station at Howrah

Plans ahead
The company also plans to set up an international free trade warehouse zone subject to approval.
An additional 50 acres will be acquired once approvals are obtained.
It is launching its third mobile harbour crane in the Kolkata Dock System.

Kolkata May 14 ABG Kolkata Container Terminal Pvt Ltd, belonging to the Mumbai-based ABG Heavy Industries Ltd, plans to launch a container freight station (CFS) at Dhulagarh (Howrah district) on National Highway 6 near here. The foundation stone will be laid on Tuesday.

To be spread over more than 13 acres, the container freight station, according to company sources, will have a 50,000 sq ft warehouse complete with modern facilities such as computerised network and on-line systems. The container freight station, to be ready within the course of the current year at an estimated cost of Rs 25 crore, will have the capacity to handle 2,000 containers initially, to be stepped up gradually.

Warehouse zone

The company, it is learnt, also has plans to set up an international free trade warehouse zone subject to the approval of the authorities concerned. Once the project is through, additional land of more than 50 acres will be acquired in the adjacent areas.

Meanwhile, ABG Kolkata Container Terminal Pvt Ltd is launching its third mobile harbour crane in the Kolkata Dock System (KDS). "The container traffic in KDS is increasing and we must gear ourselves to handle the increased volume of traffic," said company sources. The container throughput in KDS in 2006-07 was 2,40,000 TEUs as compared with 2,03,000 TEUs in 2005-06.

It might be noted that two of the company's two other mobile harbour cranes are already in operation in KDS for the past few years and their performance, according to sources, has been extremely good. "The utilisation level is as high as 97 per cent," sources observed pointing out that as many as 23 moves per hour on an average had been consistently reported. These cranes are deployed in the berth number 4 and 8 of the KDS. The new one would be deployed in berth number 4.

Despite an impressive growth of container throughput, KDS, the sources felt, might soon reach the saturation level unless the capacity was increased.

However, the biggest stumbling block, as it was pointed out, had been the limited navigability of the Hooghly river.

While various measures were being contemplated to tackle the problem, it was also felt that the creation of floating facilities for handling containers somewhere in Diamond Harbour where the draught was more could perhaps help improve the situation. The company was exploring opportunities in this regard, sources said.

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