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Amit Mitra

"Since there is more cargo than the terminal can handle and the licensed premises of the terminal is limited in dimension, we find that one type of cargo is trying to push the other type out of the terminal," according to the analysis.

Mumbai , Aug. 13

WITH the Jawaharlal Nehru Port bursting at its seams, about five lakh TEUs of incremental container cargo that is likely to be available for movement through the port in the current fiscal will have to find alternative gateways to move in or out of India, as the port cannot handle any more additional cargo.

The shippers are aware that they would have to look for alternative ports to move their cargoes.

Based on the fact that the growth of container business for the last three years has been between 25 to 30 per cent, it is expected that in the current fiscal there would be an incremental cargo of about six lakh TEUs.

While the P&O operated — Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal (NSICT) is full, the terminal at the JNPT is "technically full" and could accommodate one lakh TEUs from out of the incremental cargo.

"This clearly means that about five lakh TEUs of traffic will have to find alternate gateways to move in or out of India," a senior NSICT official admitted.

An analysis made by NSICT has shown that the cargo at the terminal is dominated by origin/destination cargo to about 62 per cent, followed by ICD (Inland Cargo Depot) cargo (28 per cent) and transhipment cargo (10 per cent). "Since there is more cargo than the terminal can handle and the licensed premises of the terminal is limited in dimension, we find that one type of cargo is trying to push the other type out of the terminal," the analysis has pointed out.

The classic case is that of ICD containers. Normally, the ICD cargo used to move out of the terminal after about two days of dwell time, which yielded a yard inventory of about 2,000 to 2,500 TEUs on ground for ICD at any given time.

"But today the ICD boxes in the yard have gone up to a level of anywhere between 4,000 to 6,000 TEUs. This has blocked five to six additional yards in the terminal. The result is that we had to close the gates for export cargoes on three occasions in July and reduce the receiving time from seven days to three days.

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