Central government-owned Paradip Port Trust, located close to the coal belt of Odisha, braved years of cynicism from its own ranks on capacity expansion and a deadly super cyclone about 20 years ago to hit 100 million tonnes (mt) of cargo in a financial year on Sunday.

Paradip Port became the second major port after Deendayal Port Trust (formerly Kandla Port Trust in Gujarat) to achieve this feat and only the third overall in the country after privately run Mundra port, also in Gujarat.

“In 1997, Paradip had only seven-and-a-half berths. Over the next five years, it built five-six berths. At that time, people thought we were unnecessarily creating capacities for a port which was never going to have this kind of cargo,” reminisced SK Mohapatra, a former Gujarat cadre IAS officer who ran Paradip Port as its chairman between 1997 and 2003.

“In fact, some of the unions complained, saying — ghosts will dance on the berths you are building, cargo will not come, why are you building these berths? But today, all those berths are fully occupied,” Mohapatra added.

In 1999, the port was badly hit by a super cyclone and a lot of things had to be rebuilt.

Scale of growth

The scale of Paradip’s growth is evident from an almost doubling of cargo over the last four years. From 68 mt in FY14, Paradip crossed 100 mt in FY18, growing at about 15 per cent over the 88.95 mt handled in FY17.

The port, located in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district on the eastern coast, has a capacity to handle 277 mt a year, making it the largest port in the country in terms of rated capacity.

Other accolades include the largest dry bulk handling port, largest coal handling port, largest coastal cargo handling port and the largest port railway terminal by rakes handled.

The ship turnaround time — time taken for a ship to unload, load and sail off — a measure of port’s efficiency, has reduced from 7.01 days in FY15 to 3.34 days this year. The pre-berthing delay has reduced from 4.11 days in FY15 to 2.81 days now.

The port’s mechanised coal handling facility has seen efficiency improvement from 33,000 tonnes per day (tpd) to 56,000 tpd and 1,300 tonnes per hour (tph) to 2,400 tph in three years.

During the year, berth-day output improved to 24,814 mt from 17,736 in FY15.

Location matters

Mohapatra attributes the success of Paradip to its location. “The port caters to the entire industrial hinterland of Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and the entire North-East. That’s a very large hinterland,” he said.

“Two of the berths built during my time as chairman were mechanised berths exclusively for coastal transportation of coal from Odisha to Tamil Nadu. That’s another area where Paradip has a huge advantage. Besides, there are many steel plants in the area which uses the port for importing coking coal,” he said.

The port also benefited immensely from a refinery set up by state-run oil refiner Indian Oil Corporation in the last decade, he observed.

The port plans to raise capacity to 325 mt by 2025 from 277 mt, including a massive ₹10,000-crore outer harbour project by 2021 to accommodate capsize vessels of 2 lakh dead weight tonnes (dwt) with a depth of 22 metres. It is also building a smart industrial port city at an investment of ₹2,770 crore.