Posted on August 11, 2016
Jawaharlal Nehu Port Trust, India’s busiest container handler, this week launched phase two of a Rs. 2,029 crore (approximately $310 million) dredging project by awarding a “project management” contract to domestic consulting group Tata Consultancy Engineering.
The project calls for deepening JNPT’s 21-mile fairway to 15 meters (about 50 feet), allowing it to accept ships with capacities of more than 12,500 twenty-foot-equivalent units. The work should be complete within two years of selecting a contractor through a competitive bidding process.
“The key benefits of the project includes handling bigger size vessels by using tidal window, increase in future container traffic, reducing ocean freight cost per TEU, faster turnaround of larger vessels and optimum utilization of capacity,” JNPT said in a trade advisory.
The action follows the completion of dredging by Netherlands-based Royal Boskalis Westminster in 2015 that brought the port to a depth of 14 meters. That moved the state port into an era of mega-ship calls with the April 1 berthing of the 13,000-TEU MSC Cristina, the largest container ship ever to have called Indian shores.
JNPT loads more than half of the containerized freight passing through India’s 12 major ports, which together account for roughly 70 percent of the nation’s overall container trade.
Amid growing competition from private rivals, especially Mundra, JNPT has been frantically rolling out congestion-alleviating and productivity-boosting measures including: gate automation, inter-terminal trucking system linking all terminals; establishment of new parking lots for trucks; allowing more shippers to use direct port delivery services for import cargo; creation of a logistics data bank to track the movement of containers and introduction of new tariff incentives for rail cargo to drive up intermodal volumes.
The effort seems to be paying off. Details obtained by JOC.com show average pre-berthing times at the port during the first fiscal quarter through the end of June dropped to 2.06 days from 4.74 days in the same period last year. Average gross berth productivity increased from 64.91 moves per hour to 73.92 moves per hour, while average gross crane productivity climbed from 20.04 moves per hour to 22.29 moves per hour, respectively.
Port officials in a recent advisory claimed that container dwell times have fallen dramatically, averaging 1.5 days, from a previous level of 11 days, for imports and 63 hours, compared with 88 hours previously, for exports.
Most notably, congestion at the public harbor has eased considerably and stakeholders and terminals are communicating more, providing greater visibility into the outcomes of various initiatives.
Source: JOC
