An unprecedented “bunching” of vessel arrivals due to snarls in other overseas ports triggered by the Red Sea crisis and a surge in container volumes have led to a ripple effect on the turnaround time of tractor trailers carting cargo boxes into and out of Jawaharlal Nehru Port, the country’s second busiest container gateway.
While the Container Freight Stations Association of India (CFSAI) has termed the situation as “congestion”, the Chairman of Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority, Unmesh Wagh, emphatically said ‘there is no congestion at J N Port”.
“The port is not choked. We have excess capacity and yard space to accommodate more containers and more vessels in the port. It is only that the turnaround time of the tractor trailers hauling containers from the port’s yard to the hinterland and vice versa has increased due to the huge increase in container traffic at J N Port because of problems in other ports,” Wagh said.
“All parameters of our vessel operations are the same. In less than 20 hours, we are turning around ships and managing all the vessels,” he said.
The port authority’s “priority” is to take care of vessels first, unload the containers from the vessels and keep them in the yard and let the vessels sail away, Wagh noted.
“So, the turnaround time of trucks is increasing because we are flush with containers which we didn’t expect. Normally, our growth rate is 7 percent, now we are growing at 11 percent . This 11 percent growth is also coming from bunching of vessels; for two days there is nothing and suddenly they come. We are not discouraging the ships; we are taking all the ships so that India’s export-import (EXIM) trade does not suffer. Because of that the
tractor trailers whose turnaround time suppose is X, it is becoming 1.5X,” the Chairman stated.
The heavy rains lashing Mumbai for the past few days has also reduced the speed of container laden trucks.
“If you have traffic which is 1.5 times more than expected, then definitely the tractor trailers will take a little more time from the yard to the hinterland and also from the container freight stations to the port’s yard,” Wagh pointed out.
According to the CFSAI, the tractor trailers waiting for gate in for import evacuation and connecting exports are struck for an average of 10-12 hours.
The delay due to traffic congestion is impacting the entire EXIM cycle, increasing the turnaround time of tractor trailers substantially, adversely impacting CFS operations and also resulting in delayed deliveries to the importers and connection of export containers to terminals, CFSAI said in a trade advisory.
JNPA Chairman Wagh said that the tractor trailers will have to “adjust” to the new cycle.
“The export dwell time and import dwell time, which is normally 19-20 hours, is now taking 24 hours. That extra four hours is within permissible limits, but the cycle is a little bit disturbed. That’s why tractor trailers are suffering, but the port operations are not suffering . They have to adjust to this cycle. There will be a disruption of the cycle of empty tractor trailers for 10-12 days. They are now used to a new high, then automatically this cycle
will be routinized,” Wagh added.
(source: ET Infra)
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