The non-utilisation of V-2 berth at the International Container Transshipment Terminal for the last one-and-a-half months, has become a matter of concern for the shipping community in Kochi port, as they are able to anchor only one container vessel at a time.

The draft problems in the berth area and the issues connected with the Gantry crane-rail alignment, were cited as the reasons for the under utilisation of V-2 berth. This, according to them, has often led to bunching of vessels at the anchorage and only one vessel has been allotted berth at a time. This has affected vessel schedules and turnaround time from Kochi.

Turnaround of vessels

However, official sources in the DP World, Kochi, clarified that the turnaround of vessels have not been affected, as the terminal now clocks an average of over 28 moves per hour per crane. Most vessels waiting for a berth are waiting for their fixed window or waiting for their cargo generation before berthing. There are also situations where the vessel operator has requested for delayed berthing due to technical failures and for waiting for the next week window in some cases, the officials said.

The shipping fraternity also pointed out that around 900+ teus of raw cashew transhipment containers from West African ports brought by mainliners are lying un-cleared for want of coastal service vessels. The shipping community has urged the Ministry to take step to relax the Cabotage Law for the smooth movement of coastal shipping service between Indian ports.

At present, Shreyas and Smile Service vessels carry Transhipment containers from Kochi to Tuticorin and Mangalore. However, both these services are not able to cater to the entire requirement due to space/tonnage issues, which lead to backlogs on almost all sailings, resulting in accumulation of demurrage for long-standing containers at ICTT, the sources added.

Cabotage restrictions

The DP World officials pointed out that the lifting of cabotage restrictions will give ICTT the necessary competitive advantage to attract mainline vessels for transhipment to and from other Indian ports. Given the fact that ICTT has been positioned to handle large volumes of transhipment containers, it does not look likely that the Indian vessel operators have the necessary infrastructure to deploy vessels to meet this large demand. With Colombo having no such restrictions and foreign vessels allowed to carry containers to Indian ports, the preference of the mainline operators would be to call their vessels at Colombo in order to offer better services to their customers, the officials added.

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