Battling COVID-19 pandemic and a sluggish market, Visakhapatnam Port Authority recorded a cargo handling turnover of 69.03 million tonnes for the financial year ending 2021-22. This was about 1% lower than the corresponding previous year, when the port handled 69.84 million tonnes of cargo.
Though the port registered some good growth in handling of steam coal, thermal coal and containers, there has been a drop in its core products such as crude oil, iron ore and coking coal.
According to the Chairman of VPA, K. Rama Mohana Rao, the drop in the iron ore from 188.61 lakh tonnes to 145.59, was mainly due to the fall in prices in the international market and the drop in coking coal from 54.23 lakh tonnes to 44.28 lakh tonnes is due the Union government asking the coal users to buy domestic coal under the Atma Nirbhar Bharat initiative, to reduce the outflow of foreign exchange. In crude oil handling, there is a drop of about 11%, over the previous year.
On the brighter side, there has been a substantial increase in the handling of steam coal and it has gone up from 50.75 lakh tonnes to 70.05 lakh tonnes. Thermal coal has gone up from 6.95 lakh tonnes to 25.96 lakh tonnes and containers have gone up from 81.78 lakh tonnes to 85.83 lakh tonnes.
Though the port has slipped from third position to fourth in the major ports ranking, efforts are on to modernise it and we expect to lodge a good growth from next year and take the capacity to over 77 million tonnes in the next couple of years, said Mr. Rama Mohana Rao.
Keeping in view of the change in cargo pattern and policies such as Atma Nirbhar Bharat, the port has decided to modify its cargo profile. We are now focussing on handling of food grains and preliminary talks are on with investors to build storage facilities with an investment of about ₹200-300 crore.
“We have a few existing godowns that are being refurbished and we will take food grains in a big way. This apart, our crude oil handling will go up, as HPCL has already expanded its capacity from eight million tonnes to 15 million tonnes,” he said.
According to Mr. Rama Mohana Rao, the proposed import of bauxite by Anrak Aluminium is also going to have a positive impact by next year. We are in talks with Anrak and we will allocate one berth to them to handle cape size vessels, which could vary between 1.5 to 2 lakh tonnes. One of our berths in the outer harbour can accommodate cape size vessels and that will be given to them, said Mr. Rama Mohana Rao.
“This apart we have entered into a bilateral agreement with Tangent of Tamil Nadu and NMDC for handing their material. These should pep up our capacity in the coming years,” he said.
On competition with private ports, the Chairman of VPA said that the port is working to improve its efficiency by modernisation and would develop capacities to compete with the best. Our idea is to reduce logistic cost and turn around time for the clients, for which we have embarked on multiple projects to address these aspects, he said.
Some of the projects include mechanisation of WQ 7 and 8 berths under PPP at a cost of about ₹288 crore, revamping of railway yard, construction of covered sheds and repair of ORS and LPG jetties.
