The Hindu Business Line : Transchart identifies dredger in China for deployment in Hooghly

The selected dredger, it is learnt, may be acquired by way of outright purchase by an Indian firm which, in turn, will charter it out to DCI for deployment in the Hooghly.

Our Bureau

Kolkata, Nov 26

The high-level team, comprising the Director of Marine of the Kolkata Port Trust and two senior officials of Dredging Corporation of India, that visited China recently, has identified one trailer suction dredger in that country for probable deployment in the Hooghly River.

The team had inspected four dredgers in China, of which one was selected.

The vessels inspected were identified by Transchart, the chartering wing of the Shipping Ministry.

Indications are that the selected vessel can start operation around February next year. This is because first it has to undergo some technological modifications to suit to the Hooghly River condition.

Also, so many formalities have to be complied with. The selected dredger, it is learnt, may be acquired by way of outright purchase by an Indian firm which, in turn, will charter it out to DCI for deployment in the Hooghly. All this will take time.

The Kolkata Port Trust, it might be recalled, had insisted on the chartering of two dredgers for Hooghly operation in view of the non-availability of sufficient number of DCI dredgers to tackle the deteriorating draft in the Hooghly River. Which means, one more dredger has to be identified for chartering. The port authorities, it is learnt, are in touch with Transchart and DCI in this regard.

Meanwhile, the draft situation in the Hooghly River was reviewed by the Chairman of Kolkata Port Trust, Dr A.K. Chanda, at a meeting at Haldia.

The two Deputy Chairmen, one each for the Kolkata Dock System and the Haldia Dock Complex, and other senior officials of the port were present.

It was noted that the deployment of seven DCI dredgers had succeeded in arresting the steady deterioration of the draft in the river.

Improvement

In fact, there had been 0.1 metre in improvement in the draft at Auckland, the governing bar. The improvement would mean that the average parcel load a vessel would rise by 400-600 tonnes depending on the vessel.

If this trend persists, it was felt that the Haldia dock would succeed in achieving the last year’s traffic level of 43 million tonnes.

Till October (April to October), the traffic throughput at Haldia was 25.293 mt, marginally up over 25.168 mt in the same period of last year.