V.O. Chidambaranar Port Sets New Record
By Aiswarya Lakshmi
Thursday, December 7, 2017
India government-owned V O Chidambaranar Port Trust (VOCPT) in Chennai created a new record for single day handling of cargo yesterday, when it handled 36,526 Metric Tonnes of thermal coal at the berth NCB-I from the vessel MV. Asian Champion.
The previous single day record was 35,656 Metric Tonnes of thermal coal at the same berth from the vessel MV. Tentenc on 30.10.2016.
Shri I. Jeyakumar, Chairman of V.O. Chidambaranar Port Trust said that this Port is continuously striving to achieve improvement in performance and productivity in order to attract more volume of traffic.
He said, "VOC Port is continuously striving to achieve improvement in performance and productivity in order to attract more volume of traffic through the Port."
VOCPT is in the process of channel-deepening and breakwater construction project to help larger ships to call at the port located in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi district.
VOCPT has a water depth of 14 metres allowing ships with a draft of 12.8 metres and cargo carrying capacity of 60,000 tonnes to call. It plans to increase the depth of the dock basin area to 16.5 metres and approach channel to 17.2 metres to enable fully-loaded Panamax vessels with a capacity of 130,000 tonnes and requiring a draft of 15.2 metres to dock.
The doubling of the ship parcel sizes calling at the port will cut logistics cost by 30 per cent, according to Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari.