The Business Bytes
TBB BUREAU
PARADIP, FEB 17, 2023
Paradip Port achieved yet another milestone by surpassing the previous fiscal’s annual traffic of 116.13 MMT, with 43 days remaining in the current financial year, by handling 116.59 MMT of cargo throughput till February 16, 2023. It has registered 17.5 per cent growth, which is the highest among all Major Ports.
Paradip Port Chairman PL Haranadh congratulated Team PPA (Paradip Port Authority) on this stupendous performance and thanked all the stakeholders for their constant support and immense contribution.
As PPA is vying for the 130 MMT cargo handling mark in the current fiscal, it urges the stakeholders to take advantage of Cape handling facilities in Paradip Port to achieve better efficiency and economies of scale.
Various system improvement measures introduced by the Port during the financial year have fuelled this growth rate. Coastal thermal coal handling has shown a remarkable 54 per cent growth in comparison to previous fiscal and it also constitutes about 31 percent of total cargo volume handled at the Port, PPA said in a statement.
POL traffic, including crude handling, has increased by 9 percent at 30.87 MMT till January 2023 in the current fiscal in this financial year as compared to previous year’s handling of 28.37 MMT. The Port has achieved the highest OSBD of 30,381 MT in FY 2022-23 (up to January 2023), registering a growth of 14 per cent as against the previous fiscal’s OSBD of 26682 MT. For thermal coal coastal shipping the Port has achieved an OSBD of nearly 50,000 MT, it added.
On account of highly improved efficiency in vessel handling, the Port has already handled more vessels than vessels handled in the last financial year, two months prior to the closing of the current fiscal. By reducing pre-berthing delays and lowering vessel stays at berths, the PPA has managed to reduce the vessel turnaround time by 11 per cent to 41.70 hours in this financial year (up to Jan ’23) than that of 46.98 hours in the last financial year.
With growing traffic for coastal shipping in the region, Paradip Port is emerging as a coastal shipping hub of the country and has plans to even coastal ship thermal coal to powerhouses located in Rajasthan, UP and Haryana.
