A year after its formal inception, the Kakinada Container Terminal Private Limited (KCTPL) has started making strides by sending commodities weighing about 26,000 tonnes a month to the African countries, West Asia and the United States via Colombo.
As of now rice is the major commodity being exported from the terminal, while seafood and cashew are in the pipeline. From loading containers to one vessel in January this year, the facility is now stacking the loads to three ships a month.
A joint venture of the Kakinada Seaports Limited (KSPL) and the Bothra Shipping Services Private Limited, the company waited for a couple of months to commence the operations after its formal launch. Since then, the exports graph has been surging with more and more small-time rice exporters from the region booking the containers.
“We accept a minimum quantity of 20 tonnes, as the average capacity of container is 26 tonnes. Since there has been a steady increase in the frequency of vessels, there is not much delay in the loading,” says M. Subramanian, terminal manager of the KCTPL.
In the last 11 months, containers have been loaded to 26 ships, including the coastal (domestic) and international ones. The Food Corporation of India formed part of the initial clientèle, as it sent rice to Kochi from the terminal located in the KSPL.
Marine products
Denmark-based Maersk Line, Singapore-based BLPL and the Mumbai-based SRS are the three carriers that handle containers from here every month.
The KCTPL is eyeing marine products being exported through Visakhapatnam port from Bhimavaram region in West Godavari district. Over 1.2 lakh tonnes of prawns are being sent from the region, in addition to other marine produce. “Our terminal is closer than the one in Visakhapatnam for the marine exporters from West Godavari district. We have made consultations with them and most of them got convinced with our container plans,” Mr. Subramanian says.
In the absence of imports, the company is forced to call empty containers from different destinations, which, in turn, has been escalating the export tariffs to some extent. Imports, however, are expected to begin in a couple of months as the ground work has already been completed. “The container service is for sure a boon to the small exporters. However, the traders are expecting the tariff to go down and the frequency of loading to be increased. Going by the market potential, it won’t take much time for the terminal to reach out to these expectations,” says A.V. Ranga Rao, proprietor of Ganesh Traders and director of the Cocanada Chamber of Commerce.
