Undeterred by the worries that have beset the Bombay Stock Exchange since a new government took power in India in May, port throughput volumes have continued to rise across the country, up 7% compared to last year, and it is the bulk industry which remains its main driver. Gavin van Marle reports from Chennai.
Figures from the Indian Ports Association for the first quarter of this year (April-June) show that the east coast port of Visakhapatnam is still India's number one. And despite the fact that its quarterly figure was down slightly - 11m tonnes compared to 11.63m tonnes in the same period last year - new projects should ensure that the port will continue its historical growth curve.
24 July saw Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT) finally award the operating certificate to Vizag Seaport Ltd (VSPL), and the next day it serviced its first ship, which discharged 24,000 tonnes of scrap metal. VSL is a joint-venture between local company Gammon India and Mersey Docks & Harbours' international management and consultancy arm, Portia Management Services. The partners signed a 30-year build-operator-transfer (BOT) lease with VPT in November 2001 worth £40m, and with construction just completed, are about to ink deals with potential customers.
"We are in the final stages of negotiations for a long term bulk material handling contract for cargo to pass through the terminal.
Various other shippers and agents are committing various break-bulk cargoes of up to 3m tonnes per year, " says Malcolm Moss of VSPL, and he adds: "The prospects for VSPL and the benefits to VPT are looking very good for the future. We are expecting to handle 2m tonnes of cargo to the end of March 2005 and thereafter approaching 6m tonnes to March 2006." Additionally, VSPL has committed itself to being able to load and unload at a handling rate of 600 tonnes per hour of dry bulk cargo and Moss lists an impressive cargo range that the terminal is expected to handle: steel, iron ore, pig iron, food grain, slag, scrap, raw sugar, timber and granite in the break-bulk category; and fertilizers, pet coke, calcined pet coke, met coke, coking coal, feldspar, steam coal, illuminated sand and lime stone in the bulk sector.
VSPL covers two multipurpose berths, EQ 8 and EQ 9 - 255 and 315 metres long respectively - and also includes an enormous yard and storage area covering 80,000 sq metres. Under the terms of the BOT agreement, VSPL also had to undertake a capital dredge project, which saw the berth and approach channel deepened to 11.8 metres and capable of handling ships of up to 35,000dwt. VSPL has begun a two-phase capital dredging phase which will offer 14 metres alongside the berth by December 2006.
In terms of handling equipment, VSPL was expecting the delivery of two Liebherr LHM 400 mobile harbour cranes as PS went to press. The diesel-hydraulic units are equipped with two doublewinches giving a maximum lift-hook SWL capacity of 104 tonnes, and maximum SWL lifting capacity of 42 tonnes. As per usual, the cranes can be used for general cargo hook operations, but additional attachments have also been supplied, including a rotator attachment with a slewing drive system, 35 cu metre grabs for bulk material handling - of which the capacity is 750 tonnes/hour - and magnetic attachments for steel slab handling of up to 40 tonnes. Additionally, the cranes are fitted with Liebherr's Cycoptronic feature, which eliminates swing during luffing and slewing.
Perhaps indicating when the terminal expects to begin operations on its long term contract, Moss says that two mobile hoppers, six conveyor belts with a 1,600 tonnes/hour capacity, two stacker/ reclaimers with a stacking capacity of 1,600 tonnes/hour and reclaiming capacity of 1,050 tonnes/hour, and wagon loader with a 1,050 tonnes/hour capacity are also on order. These units are expected to be deployed by September 2005, although Moss declined to reveal the supplier.
NEGOTIATIONS UNDERWAY Further south along the Indian coast at Ennore Port Ltd (EPL), India's first and so far only corporatised port, negotiations are also underway for the development of private participation in bulk terminal operations.
Originally built purely to supply coal to new power stations that the Tamil Nadu government was building outside Chennai, after a government of India decree that power stations should be near to the sea to take their immense freight requirements off the inland transport system, EPL has never looked likely to fully utilize its 16m tonnes/year handling capacity. "Today the total requirement of the local power industry is 9-10m tonnes per year, and it is very doubtful if the state power company will need the remainder, " says a senior EPL official. "But that capacity is reserved for them, so in order to increase the cargo diversity we are developing other areas of the port, " Despite the fact that Ennore also showed a drop in throughput in the latest IPA figures - witnessing a slight quarterly fall of 2.27% from April to June this year, handling 2.45m tonnes compared with 2.52m tonnes in the April-June period 2003 - there is immediate hope that its year-end throughput will show a marked increase over last year's figure. This is due to the recent inauguration of a temporary berth handling iron ore exports for Indian bulk giant MMTC, the country's largest iron ore exporter.
MMTC has indicated that it expects to see some 3m tonnes go through the facility this year, and it handled its first vessel in late June, loaded with 50,000 tonnes of iron ore for China. The facility became available following congestion at Chennai port during 2003 with iron ore vessels having to wait 50-60 days to get a berth. MMTC faced delays in sending iron ore to China and Japan, and looked at Ennore for alternative arrangements. Meanwhile, Chennai port is also faced with the prospect of iron ore exports getting phased out by 2008 as part of its policy to remove 'dirty' cargoes from the city centre.
However, the new facility is only a stopgap until a dedicated iron ore terminal begins operations. The results of a BOT tender for the terminal will be announced shortly according to the EPL official: "The deadline for bids was 29 July and the current shortlist consists of two parties, MMTC itself and the privately-owned stevedore Adani, from Gujarat."
UP TO OPERATORS AND THE MARKET EPL is also preparing the tender documents to a common user coal facility which will eventually be able to handle a further 8m tonnes annually. The port official outlined EPL's strategy: "We are now simply based on the landlord model. EPL will not be developing any of the terminals itself. We may be corporatised, but the state remains the shareholder and our policy is simply to provide the available space, along with the landside infrastructure links and obviously the port authority functions. After that it is up to the operators and the market."
Yet its plans do indicate one of the ways in which the industry in India is moving: supplying the enormous demand for raw materials in China. In the Gujarati port of Kandla, Gujarat NRE Coke Ltd (GNCL) has confirmed that it will invest $10.8m into a new lam coke manufacturing plant, thus raising its export production from a current level of 397,000 to 721,000 tonnes per year.
Recently Haldia Dock Complex, the major bulk facility in west Bengal, serving Kolkata, threatened ocean carriers that it will begin to reject geared ships from the port if their own loading equipment is not up to standard. "Of late it has been noticed that some vessels brought to Haldia for loading iron ore manually, are found to be very old and have very poor quality lifting appliances, " a port official said recently. "As a result productivity of these vessels is far below the average achieved on good ships. The presence of low productivity vessels inside the dock not only increases the turnaround time of the vessels due to their poor performances, but affects other vessels which are waiting for a working berth.
"Therefore, " he continued, "it has been decided that vessels which have cranes of at least 20 tonnes SWL capacity will be accepted for loading iron ore manually with a view to achieve average productivity of 12,000 tonnes per day."
That said, with P&O Ports having just signed a deal to develop a bulk/general handling facility at its new Bengali project at Kulpi, about 72km downriver from Kolkata, continuing private participation in bulk facilities will undoubtedly characterise the future of the industry.
