The first train carrying shipping containers from the Tondiarpet facility, near Chennai, of Container Corporation of India reached the Marg Karaikal Port at Karaikal on October 19. This service could ease congestion at Chennai port’s two private container terminals.

Due to the congestion, export containers were not accepted at Chennai between October 14 and 17.

The Department of Customs permitted the trade to use the Karaikal port as a transhipment port for containerised cargo.

There will be regular container train services linking Karaikal port with Concor’s inland container depots and container freight stations across the country, according to a press release issued by Marg Ltd, which runs the private port located in southern Puducherry and adjacent to Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam port.

All-weather port

Karaikal port is the only all-weather, deep-water, multi-commodity port between Chennai and Tuticorin and is strategically located in the middle of this 680 km of coastline.

The project was awarded to Marg by the Puducherry Government in 2006 to build the port under build, own and transfer basis.

The port is being developed in three phases with the final phase expected to be operational by 2016 with a total of nine berths capable of annually handling up to 50 million tonnes of cargo.

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