Bhubaneswar:Odisha’s lone major port in Paradip has maintained impressive business track-record becoming the second amongst the major ports in terms of annual cargo handling for 2016-17 financial year.
Paradip stands second only to Kandla port in Gujurat with registering traffic throughput of 88.95 million tons exhibiting 16.46% annual growth in cargo handling.
The impressive show of spurt in traffic was made possible following excellent port infrastructure, stakeholders dedicated efforts and level-playing business environment, said Chairman Paradip port trust, Rinkesh Ray.
The port is poised for massive infrastructure makeover with a series of projects lined up for implementation. At present Paradip is the best port in eastern India in terms of cargo handling capacity. Prospects are Paradip port. If everything goes the right way, Paradip would top the list of major ports in cargo handling, said port officials.
During the 2016-17 fiscal year, the port performance parameter witnessed rising trend. The Berth-day out-put improved to 23139 MT with 12.24% growth and the Berth Occupancy stood at 66% as against 67% of the previous year despite of handling of 16.46% more cargo to lead the port at par with international standard.
A record quantity of 88.95 MMT of cargo handled during this Financial year surpassing the previous year record of 76.39 MMT.
A record quantity of 8.34MMT of cargo handled during the month of March-2017 surpassing the previous record of 8.06 MMT handled during month of July-2016.
Resumption of operation of Iron Ore Handling Plant during May, 2016 after resolving the CFH worker’s issue and 3.69MMT Cargo handled through shipment of 75 numbers of vessels & also 1022 numbers of rakes were handled in 2016-17 fiscal year.
The South Oil- Jetty was made operative in August -2016 (25.08.2016) for loading/unloading of Oil Cargo.
The Productivity of 54825 MT per day in Mechanized Coal handling Plant has been achieved in this Financial Year as against 40435 MT per day in the previous year & exhibiting a growth of 35%.
The output of ship berth-day of 23727 MT has been achieved as against 21139 MT for the corresponding period of previous year & exhibiting a growth of 12%.
Coastal trade between India (Paradip Port) and Bangladesh commenced on 29.12.2016. For the first time 11,951 MT of Pet Coke produced in the IOCL Refinery, Paradip was shipped to Orient Cement Ltd through coastal shipment on February 28. An all time record of 30 numbers of rakes were un-loaded in a single day on February 26.