PPA creates history by crossing last fiscal’s cargo throughput number 43 days in advance
By Pravakara Sahoo
Paradip, Feb. 18: Paradip Port achieved yet another milestone by surpassing the previous fiscal’s annual traffic of 116.13 MMT, with 43 days remaining in current financial year, by handling 116.59 MMT of cargo throughput till 16th February’ 2023. It has exhibited a positive growth of 17.5%, which is the highest among all Major Ports. While congratulating Team PPA on this stupendous performance, Shri P.L. Haranadh, Chairman, PPA has also offered his heartfelt thanks to all Stakeholders for their constant support and immense contribution. As the Port Is vying for the coveted 130 MMT Cargo Handling mark in the current fiscal, it urges the Stakeholders to take advantage of Cape handling facilities in Paradip Port to achieve better efficiency and economies of scale.
Various system improvement measures, introduced by the port during the financial year have fuelled this growth rate. Coastal Thermal Coal handling has shown a remarkable 54% growth in comparison to previous fiscal and it also constitutes about 31% of total cargo volume handled at the Port. Secondly, POL traffic including crude handling have increased by 9% at 30.87 MMT in this financial year (Upto Jan’23) than previous year’s handling of 28.37 MMT over the same time period. The port has achieved highest OSBD of 30,381 MT in FY 22-23 (Upto Jan’23), a 14% growth than last financial year’s OSBD of 26682 MT (Upto Jan’22). For thermal coal coastal shipping the port has achieved an OSBD of nearly 50,000 MT.
On account of highly improved efficiency in vessel handling, the port has already handled more vessels than vessels handled in last financial year, two months prior to this financial year closing. By reducing pre-berthing delays and lowering vessel stays at berths, the port have managed to reduce the vessel turn around time by 11% to 41.70 hrs in this financial year (upto Jan’23) than that of 46.98 hrs in last financial year.
With growing traffic for coastal shipping in the region, Paradip Port is emerging as a coastal shipping hub of the country and has plans even to coastal ship thermal coal to power houses located in Rajasthan, UP and Haryana.
