JNPT planning private dredging finance, new mega-terminal

JNPT planning private dredging finance, new mega-terminal As with most of India’s container ports, the Jawaharlal Nehru Port is working at close to 100 percent utilization.
   The issue is particularly pressing at JNPT (or JNP Trust) because the three container terminals at the port handle roughly 60 percent of all container volume for the country. Having handled more than 4 million TEUs in 2007, the port is the world’s 24th busiest.
   At the South Asia Ports, Logistics and Shipping 2008 conference in Mumbai last week, JNPT Chairman Shahzad Hussain said that upgrades are in the works, but in the meantime, the port can cope.
   'We are already working past our capacity,' Hussain said. 'But we have broad, strong shoulders. We will carry this burden.'
   Hussain said JNPT will upgrade to twin-lift tandem quay cranes in any new orders, an important development since a large number of boxes moving through India are 20-footers, and using twin-lift cranes allows two 20-foot boxes to be lifted at the same pace as one is lifted today.
   The most pressing issue for JNPT, however, is dredging, as the port is only able to handle ships laden with no more than 2,600 TEUs due to draft issues.
   Hussain said a consortium of two private terminal operators, shipping lines and the port trust is proposing to create a vehicle to finance dredging in the channel and berths at JNPT to allow larger and more fully laden ships to call at the port. Dredging at the port has been on the national shipping ministry’s books for three years, but the plan has been beset by delays. Another delay this year, over bidding of the project, has pushed back dredging to 2009.
   Further down the line is a plan to build a huge new container terminal to augment the ports’ current capacity. In the port’s master plan is a second phase for JNPT, to be built on reclaimed land, that would add 4.5 million TEUs of capacity (in effect more than doubling current design capacity). Hussain said he hoped the terminal would come online in tandem with the opening of a planned dedicated freight rail corridor linking Delhi with JNPT, scheduled for 2012.