m.v. Kota Nabil, a mainline container vessel (providing direct connectivity to other countries), arrived at the New Mangalore Port Trust on Sunday from eastern Africa (Port Matwara).
This is the first mainline vessel to arrive here in this financial year, the vessel started its operation of unloading 153 boxes of raw cashew and sailed out on Monday morning.
According to S. Gopalakrishna, port's Traffic Manager, the entire operation took only one shift of eight hours because of the efficiency of the cargo handling workers.
The operation had been scheduled to be completed in two shifts.
Cost reduced
He said in a statement that the advantage of mainline vessel directly calling the port was that it reduced transit time and handling cost.
Now it took only nine days for transit between Mangalore and eastern Africa.
Earlier, commodities were routed via Colombo and it took 21 days.
The exporters could utilise the advantage of moving their export cargo since the vessel was touching Singapore and East Asian countries in the return voyage. NMPT chairman P. Tamilvanan said the port had resulted in upward growth of container traffic with the mainline vessels directly arriving here.
Mr. Tamilvanan said a record 26,634 TEUs of container traffic was handled this current year of Sunday as against 19,724 TEUs handled during the corresponding period of last year registering a growth rate of 35 per cent.
He said a few more main line vessels were expected to visit Mangalore shortly.
