• PAGE ONE
• INDEX
• HOME

Chennai port's record

The Chennai port has accomplished a record output of cargo in a single day. On December 21, the port handled the highest ever throughput of 2.10 lakh tonnes of cargo, beating the previous record of 2.01 lakh tonnes set in June 1999.

The Chairman of the Chennai Port Trust (ChPT), Mr P. Bhaskaradoss, said that with the same pace of performance, the port would achieve the 42 million-tonne target fixed by the government for this fiscal.

The Chairman also pointed out that measures to generate new types of cargo had yielded good results. So far, 3,360 cars were exported to Algeria, Indonesia and Morocco. In the shipment of cars, the port's highest performance was exporting 1,000 cars in a round seven hours, at the rate of 134 cars per hour on November 22, according to a press release.

On the container-handling front, the port handles an average of around 1,000 TEUs per day, with only three gantry cranes, against the four available. One gantry was damaged during a freak weather phenomenon a couple of months ago.

On December 14, the port handled 988 TEUs (twenty foot equivalent units), the largest volume to be handled on a single vessel (Tiger Bridge) on a single day at the container terminal Berth I.

The vessel also set a record by handling 1,333 moves in three shifts using 12 gangs. The average per shift on the vessel was 333.25 moves, and per hour the productivity on the vessel was 41.65 moves. -- Our Bureau