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Santanu Sanyal

Haldia, Oct 10 Tata Steel is keen to have its own jetty on the river front at Haldia.

“We will design, construct and develop our own captive riverine jetty at Haldia to meet our export-import throughput requirement,” says Mr B. Muthuraman, Managing Director of Tata Steel, in a letter to the Chairman of Kolkata Port Trust.

The letter also explains the kind of facility Tata Steel would like to have. The location of the jetty should be outside the lockgate but not far from the existing oil jetties on the riverfront.

The proposed jetty will primarily handle clean cargo and have the final capacity of two million tonnes (mt) annually. The draft of the Hooghly river at the jetty should be the same as that at present.

There should be an open back up storage space of 15 acres with a railway siding of 800 metres. The cost of the project complete with two mobile harbour cranes and back up area has been estimated at Rs 100 crore.

Setting the time limit for the project, the Tata Steel Managing Director has expressed his desire to have the jetty commissioned on September 1, 2009, exactly two years from now. The plan is to sign the concession agreement by May 2008, start construction of the jetty and development of backup facilities by September next year and complete construction and installation of equipment by August 2009.

Tata Steel’s current throughput of export-import traffic at Haldia is around two million tonnes, around 90 per cent being the import of raw materials such as coking coal, limestone, coke and other materials. The raw material requirement is projected to rise many times more with the completion of the expansion of the company’s Jamshedpur plant, from the present five million tonnes to seven mt by the middle of 2008 and further to 10 mt by 2010. Tata Steel also proposes to set up at Jharkhand a greenfield steel plant of the capacity of 12 mt in two phases.

“The projected increase in our traffic calls for a dedicated berthing and handling facility captive in nature at Haldia which is and will continue to be an important gateway to exports and imports of not only Tata Steel but also other group companies,” Mr Muthuraman has observed.

It might be noted that a few years ago TM International Logistics, a joint venture between Tata Steel and Martrade of Germany, acquired on long-term lease a berth (No. 12) at Haldia for captive use. The throughput of the berth was 1.17 mt in 2005-06, 0.89 mt in 06-07 and 5.34 lakh tonnes so far in the current fiscal.

Haldia-based Hooghly Metcoke, a joint venture between Tata Steel and West Bengal Government to produce coke for steel plants, too has shown interest in having its river front jetty at Haldia, it is learnt.

More Stories on : Shipping | Tata Steel Ltd | Steel

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