KoPT gets highest ever cargo growth this year

Kolkata: The Kolkata Port Trust has achieved highest ever cargo throughput in the 2018-19 financial year.

The Kolkata Port has handled 63.7 million tonnes of cargo traffic in 2018-19 compared to 57.9 million tonnes in 2017-18 by registering a growth of over 10 percent.

The port trust, which includes Kolkata dock system and Haldia dock complex, is now ranked fifth largest in terms of cargo handling among all major ports and is the second fastest growing port in the country.

Haldia Dock Complex handled its highest ever throughput of 45.2 million tonnes in this year surpassing the previous high of 43.6 million tonnes which was in 2007-08. As compared to last year's handling of 40.5 million tonnes, this is an impressive growth by 11.6 percent. Incidentally, the Kolkata Dock also post its highest traffic handling of 18.5 million tonnes in 2018-19 compared to last year's cargo handling of 17.4 million tonnes recording a growth of 6.6 percent.

In container traffic, the port trust has surpassed 8 lakh TEUs of cumulative handling. The Kolkata Dock ended the fiscal with 6.51 lakh TEUs and Haldia Dock Complex contributed 1.78 lakh TEUs in containers which resulted in Kolkata Port handling 8.29 lakh TEUs cumulatively. Teu is a measure to estimate a ship's cargo carrying capacity.

A senior port official said initiatives such as calling of cape-size vessels with deployment of floating cranes at Sagar and Sandheads, large-scale capacity addition in terms of increasing the cargo staking area and focus towards quicker turn round of vessels and on faster evacuation of cargo from docks has enabled the Kolkata Port Trust to achieve this milestone.

In October, the first cape-vessel with a carrying capacity of 1.67 lakh tones was handled by the port trust. "We are planning additional berths at Haldia to cater to the revival of the steel industry. We are also gearing up to handle LPG and LNG cargo," an official said.