Chennai Port has benefited from aggressive efforts to increase productivity, but it faces serious competition from a new container terminal set to open just 15 miles away amid stagnant demand.
Overall average container dwell time fell from nearly 3 days to 2.5 days in the first three fiscal quarters, according to new productivity data obtained by JOC.com. Dwell times here denote the time it takes exports inside terminal gates to be loaded onto a ship and imports onto a truck or train.
Turnaround times for ships in the April-to-December period also improved, falling from from 1.24 days previously to 1.1 days, while the port’s average output per ship berth day increased from 28,256 tonnes (31,147 tons) to 32,908 tonnes.
Highlighting those gains, the DP World-operated Chennai Container Terminal last week hosted the CMA CGM Mozart with a draft of 14.8 meters (48.5 feet), reportedly the deepest draft of any container ship to dock at Chennai. That broke the 14.6-meter record set by the CMA CGM Bellini at the same terminal Jan. 7, according to a company trade notice.
The vessels are part of CMA CGM’s NEWMO service connecting North Europe, the Mediterranean, Australia, South Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent.
“The newly dredged draft has successfully attracted three large vessels at the port. We hope to continue this success while delivering world class service to our clients,” DP World Chennai CEO K.K. Krishnadas told JOC.com.
Chennai in 2016 finished dredging the port’s fairway to 15 meters to support the increasingly larger vessels container lines deploy on major trade lanes and compete with its closest private rivals, especially Kattupalli.
“We have been working closely with the port trust to strengthen the existing infrastructure at the port,” Krishnadas said.
Though Chennai’s chronic congestion issues have moderately eased in recent months, Adani Ports’ new Ennore Terminal, currently expected to begin operations in June, could exacerbate the cargo shift that picked up speed last year when Maersk Line’s westbound shuttle service switched from Chennai to Kattupalli. That was reflected in Chennai’s April-to-December throughput, which fell 4 percent year-over-year to 1.12 million TEUs from 1.17 million TEUs.
Amid those challenges, the port trust is working with railway authorities to build a dry port at Jolarpet, about 140 miles from the harbor, to help capture freight hauled by trucks on the route, which accounts for roughly 50,000 TEUs annually. The port has been working to convert road loads to rail, but that effort has struggled.
“There is huge time advantage for transfer of containers by rail from Jolarpet to the port. While the average time taken from a CFS [container freight station] to the port is about 20 hours due to road congestion, the rail movement is about four hours from Jolarpet to the port,” the port trust said in a feasibility report.
Source: JoC (LF)
Source: JoC