Dredgers to keep Haldia draft at 7m

The Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) is confident about maintaining an average draft of 7.1 metre during the lean month of December using additional dredgers.

There has been a minor fall in draft in October on a year-on-year comparison, while the average draft in December was expected to remain the same as last year. "The parcel size of a vessel was directly connected to draft", admitted A K Bagchi, director, marine, KoPT. While there has been a decline of around 1500-2000 tons of parcel size per vessel, the net cargo handling together with the revenue from cargo had actually gone up during the first half of the financial year.

Till October 31 the port handled 25.293 million tons (mnt) of cargo as against 25.168mnt in the same period last fiscal.

By end-March 2009, KoPT expected a net cargo handling of above 44mnt from 43.58mnt last fiscal. While the average parcel size had fallen, a change in cargo composition with a tilt towards container traffic pushed up the port's revenue from cargo handling by 12 per cent during the first half of the fiscal. There was a 42 per cent rise in container traffic at 87401 twenty equivalent units(TEU) this fiscal. At the same time, reflecting drop in dry bulk cargo, the average parcel size for coking coal was at 24441 tons now from 26605 tons a year back.

The port earned Rs2500 for handling a single container carrying around 12 to 14 tons of cargo. As against this, it earned Rs55 per ton of iron ore. The same tonnage of dry bulk cargo, therefore, earned less revenue for the port. "Currently, container traffic was less than 1mnt, break bulk cargo at 3mnt and liquid cargo at 18mnt while the remaining was dry bulk cargo.", said S K Mondal, director, planning and research, KoPT. The dredger-16 from Sethusamundram arrived on November 2, taking the number of dredgers working on the Haldia channel to five. The Haldia Dock Officers' Forum (HDOF) was vocal about relocation of dredger 16, reportedly the most efficient dredger, from the Sethusamundram Shipping Canal Project(SSCP).