"Transshipment capability & issues of Indian ports"

Vishal Kashav: MBA Port & Shipping Management UPES Mail id:

Nidhi Singh MBA Energy Trading UPES

ABSTRACT:
India has a wide and rich coast line of 7,516 kms which can be used to its best, It is divided into two parts, East coast & West coast. There are 187 major & non-major ports on the coastline. It is difficult to define transshipment ports in these terms as most of them target international traffic and few are specialized in coastal trade. Transshipment ports have highly modern & efficient infrastructure facilities for handling different types of commodities. As operations takes place at a very high speed at transshipment ports. They are considered to be the busiest ports because the ratio of transit cargo handled by these ports is very high compared to locally bound cargo. Singapore port, Colombo port (Sri lanka) and Salalah(Oman) are the best examples of transshipment hubs near to India, which are been used by India for its transshipments. Therefore, such ports need to be located near to International shipping routes & need to posses deep draft to accommodate large vessels. The vessel sizes are increasing and can be seen in the huge capacity of Maersk vessels like Sovereign Maersk class(1997) carry 8,100 TEUs to Triple-E class(2013) 18,270 TEUs. Maersk has set new standards & records for the shipping industry and touched a milestone by designing biggest ever container vessel named "Maersk Mc Kinney Moller" in the year 2013. Colombo & Singapore handle approximately 1.5 TEUs of transshipment from India. East coast of India contributes around 1 million TEUs of transshipment cargo. All major ports like Mumbai,

Chennai, Mangalore & Tuticorin have natural draft of 10-14 meters whereas Vizhinjam has a draft of 20 meters, being just 10 Nautical miles far from the International route, it is also better located than ports like mumbai & Chennai which are both 480 Nautical miles away. More over, Vizhinjam is blessed with low tidal variation conditions which makes it better compare to other ports. Vizhinjam holds the maximum potential to be the future transshipment hub. Hence investment in Vizhinjam port will yield very high returns.

Ref: Shipping, Marine & Ports Exposition 2012, Report by Deloitte(june 2012) Article on "Transshipment hub in india" by Maurya Velupula, The Economic times (October 16, 2007)