The Hindu Business Line : Containers pile up at Chennai terminal yard

Chennai, Oct. 12 The Chennai Container Terminal yard is choking with rows of high-rise containers stacked all over. This is not due to a strike or equipment failure at the terminal, but because of a damaged manhole outside the Chennai harbour affecting container movement out of the terminal.

The manhole in a narrow street in Royapuram in North Chennai has hit the flow of container vehicles from Gate 2A, the exit for container traffic, of the harbour since October 5. This has resulted in the yard inventory mounting to 10,151 boxes on Friday morning against an operating capacity of 6,500 boxes. The average inventory in August was 7,410 and in September 7,847, according to Mr Ennarasu Karunesan, CEO, Chennai Container Terminal (CCT).

If the boxes are not cleared from the terminal, there could be more problems in the coming days as four container ships are waiting in anchorage for berthing, and four more are expected. This means around 4,500 import boxes will be offloaded and 3,000 will have to be loaded into the ships, leaving an excess load of 1,500 in the terminal, he said.

A source in the trade said congestion is likely to set in at CCT, if speedy evacuation of boxes is not done from the terminal.

Alternative arrangements

The CCT and trade members requested officials of Chennai Customs to look at alternative arrangements to move out the boxes fast. They requested one-time permission to move containers from the terminal to a container freight station (CFS) by grouping containers of a particular vessel instead of the normal practice of obtaining Customs permission for each container. This is to avoid delay in processing.

The second suggestion was to allow en-bloc movement of boxes belonging to Accredited Clients Programme importers (ACP). This programme allows importers with a clean track record to clear their containers from the container terminal itself instead of clearance from a CFS. A non-ACP importer has to necessarily clear imports only from a CFS.

The boxes for ACP importers are normally cleared within 48 hours, if not moved to the CFS of the shipping line’s choice. However, due to the present congestion, there are around 1,000 uncleared boxes belonging to ACP importers. These uncleared boxes are intended to be moved to one particular CFS – Concor – to avoid processing delays and decongest the terminal, the source said.

The third suggestion was permission to file ‘in advance’ request by CFS operators to move containers from the vessel to their CFS without waiting for arrival of the vessel. This will allow advance planning of movement of boxes before the vessel arrives. At present, only after the vessel arrives the CFS operators can submit request to Customs for moving boxes to an offshore CFS.

Customs officials have accepted the proposals, Mr Karunesan said.