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VPT move to cut down vessel turnaround time

Our Bureau

VISAKHAPATNAM, March 30

APPARENTLY spurred on by the new threat from the Kakinada port, which recently increased its draft to 11 mts and handled the first coking coal vessel last week, the Vizag port has cobbled together a strategy aimed at ensuring quicker turnaround of vessel .

The strategy primarily focusses on cutting down idle time so that non-stop working on vessels can be achieved, which would not only increase productivity but also slash the cost per tonne.

The strategy is being implemented on the first vessel, Amber K, which berthed at the Vizag port on Wednesday morning to discharge about 23,000 tonnes of coking coal.

The port, which was able to handle 14,000 tonnes of the cargo till 4.00 p.m., is confident that the entire consignment would be unloaded within 24 hours. ``Even going by the rate of discharge from the last coking coal vessel handled by the port, the time that it would have taken (without the implementation of the strategy) would be 48 hours for the same volume of cargo,'' a port official said.

The vessel arrived at the port with 45,000 tonnes of coal for SAIL from Australia, with half of it to be discharged at Vizag for onward movement to Bhilai and the other half to be discharged at Haldia for SAIL's Durgapur and Bokaro plants.

Authoritative sources told Business Line that the port sees a perceptible threat from Kakinada, which is making efforts to grab a chunk of coking coal cargo from Vizag. The sources said the port will be calling for a meeting with various agencies concern ed, including the users, exporter/importer and shipping agents, to discuss this strategy and ensure that it becomes a regular feature of the port.

Meanwhile, with the handling of the coking coal vessel, the port's cargo throughput crossed the 39 million tonne mark by Wednesday, the highest ever achieved by the port. This marked a 12 per cent increase over the target set by the Ministry of Surface T ransport for the port for the current fiscal and nine per cent increase over last financial year's throughput.