The V O Chidambaranar (VOC) (Tuticorin) Port received a vessel with 14m draft on 15th Oct.2018. The vessel, 'MV Zheng Jun' which is 229m long and had a beam of 32.26m was docked at the north cargo berth.
The vessel brought 74,962 tonnes of Indonesian coal for (NTPL plant at Tuticorin. The previous record was 60,500 tonnes of rock phosphate for Greenstar Fertilizers Limited, Tuticorin and the vessel draft was 13.20m draft. The draft is the depth from the water line to the bottom of the ship. This is the clearance a ship needs to safely berth in the port. The business and industry in south Tamil nadu will be directly benefitted from the advantages of scale such big vessels bring to the city of Tuticorin.
The port authorities have initiated maintenance dredging for enhancement of draft in the dock basin and approach channel. Depth in the dock basin of the port will be increased to 15.50m and the approach channel to 16.50m. this will facilitate handling fully-laden Panamax size vessels with a draft of up to 14.5m as well as container vessels with the capacity of 9500 TEUs, within a period of two months. Further Considering the growing demand for bigger size container and dry bulk vessels of 16m draft and to attract trans-shipment traffic, the port has proposed increasing depth of the inner harbour to 16.70m .
Shot in the arm - Relaxation in cabotage rules
Relaxation in cabotage rules that were prohibiting foreign flagged vessels from ferrying domestic cargo will help transshipment activity to Indian ports and can help save forex and also create jobs opportunities locally. The cabotage rules were one of the biggest hindrance preventing Indian ports to act as transshipment hub .. But India's revised, liberalized cabotage law — opening the intra-India export/import container transportation segment to foreign-flag ocean carriers can increase the attractiveness of Indian ports as direct ports of call for ocean carriers on major trade lanes and transform some of them into transhipment hubs, which is required to reduce the shippers' need to relay cargo over foreign ports with additional costs and longer transits. The shipping industry estimates "Currently, around 25 percent of [total] Indian container traffic and 78 percent of cargo originating from or destined to the east coast of India is transhipped at ports outside India. The relaxation of cabotage regulation will help to attract more containerized cargo by reducing time and cost for mainline vessels thereby ensuring efficiencies of scale, facilitating India in becoming world class shipping hub at par with the region lead Singapore
How Tuticorin port can be beneficial for shippers?
McKinsey & Company, the consultant hired by the Shipping Ministry to prepare a strategy for transshipment and mainline calls at major ports have brought out the feasibility of VO Chidambaranar Port as a potential alternate port to Colombo due to its geographical location close to the international shipping route and possibility of being connected to inland product manufacturing but it needs better infrastructure and draft to allow bigger mainline ships to dock,"
Shipping lines mainline vessel services connecting China with Europe, Bangladeshi garments (western exports travel east to ports in Singapore or Malaysia first before they are trans shipped to), bigger vessels that take them to destinations. India will reduce transit time to their markets
economical & Savings by consultant study/recommendations
Calling at VOC Port instead of Colombo entails a deviation of 51 nautical miles, which translates into an additional voyage time of only three hours for a ship. Of the 50 services calling at Colombo, a handful of services have been identified that can call at VOCPT based on its captive traffic. These include services such as the EAX, Australia Express, East Coast EC5 and Empire.
Mainline ship services calling at Colombo are fed Indian origin-destination containers through small feeder ships. mainline main line call at VOCPT will yield a benefit of as much as $50 per TEU for a ship, compared to using it as a feeder port, say experts.
Sending a container from VOCPT to Colombo en-route to the UK/Shanghai would cost $288 after factoring in vessel-related charges (VRC) and box transfer cost at Colombo, feedering cost from VOCPT to Colombo, container related charges (CRC) at VOCPT and mainline voyage cost, assuming a parcel size of 1,000 TEUs per week.
VOCPT will earn ₹3.75 crore from a mainline vessel call by Wan Hai after factoring in a 60 per cent discount in VRC extended to the service. The total benefit to VOCPT from five shortlisted mainline services is estimated to be ₹24 crore.
What does all this mean for the city of Tuticorin?
Tuticorin can be south India"s the power hub. The city can also become the distribution and integration center for the industrial raw materials and manufacturing export of products respectively for the hinterland.
But Tuticorin lacks a developed railway network with the hinterland. Develop the backbone concept in partner to attract more container business. bulk cargo
VOC port is just three hours sailing time from the international sea lanes, a critical advantage for the future of marine trade over Chennai. Time is the most competitive factor for shipping industry and Tuticorin needs to offer better TAT (turn around time) with greater efficiencies for main line vessels compared to Colombo, which is a world class transshipment port. This will improve the container trade deficit (the balance between incoming import containers and outgoing export container units) that it presently faces. This can also have a cascading effect on the development of coastal transportation, powered by service upgrades and tariff advantages, could prove to be a key factor in easing pressure on rail-road networks.
What needs to be done?
"To attract the next generation [of] deep-draft vessels, additional steps needs to be taken — such as competitive marine charges as other hubs like Colombo enjoy pricing flexibility and offer more competitive rates compared to Indian ports," company officials told JOC.com. "A move towards a market determined tariff, investment in state-of-the-art technology, and maintaining deeper drafts are among other measures that will boost the sector to make it more attractive and support India's trade growth.".
the change will benefit privately operated minor ports — especially Adani Group's terminal network led by Mundra — rather than public ports such as Chennai — on the strength of their pricing and infrastructure competitiveness, versus rule bound government run rivals.
Conclusion
If Government, industry and business and trade can pull together the dream of a Tuticorin mega polis can be a reality in the near future. Fish processing storage and packing for global exports and related industry has a tremendous scope. There is already a strong mineral and metals and chemicals manufacturing base which can support a host of other newage industries. The service sector required for this existing base itself can generate huge employment to skilled youth of this region.
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