Front Cover May - WorldCargo News Online

WorldCargo
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Chennai ahead of target
Chennai Container Terminal Ltd
(CCTL), the P&O Ports subsidiary
set up to operate the container
terminal at Chennai in south India,
is well ahead of the cargo handling
target set for it thanks to new
and modern container handling
equipment brought in by the
company.
Under the terms of the 30 year
concession agreement, CCTL was
given the target of handling
350,000 TEU in the first year of
operations and 500,000 TEU by
2006. By the end of March this year,
CCTL had handled 424,665 TEU,
an increase of 23 per cent over the
previous year. “We will hit the
500,000 TEU target by 2004,” said
CCTL CEO Ganesh Raj.
The increase has been facilitated
by the installation of four
new ship-to-shore cranes and 10
RTGs, all ordered from Noell
The gross crane rate at CCTL has increased to 18 moves per hour
Crane Systems. On an average the
terminal handled 38 vessels a
month in 2002 against 20.5 in
2001. The gross crane rate increased
to 18 moves per hour in
2002 from just eight in 2001.
With all the new cranes now in
service, the new target for 2003
is 22 moves per crane hour.
The average turnaround time
for vessels came down to 24 hours
in 2002 against 96 hours the year
before. CCTL’s aim is to turn
Chennai container terminal into
a transhipment hub for the east
coast of India.
Subic pipe row smoulders on
The Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority
(SBMA) has dismissed suggestions
that the bidding rules for
the US$136.5 mill Subic container
terminal project were
slanted to prevent bids from Filipino
steel pipe pile manufacturers
(see World Cargo News, February
2003, p6).
The SBMA Bids and Award
Committee is in the process of
evaluating construction tenders
from Nishimatsu Construction
Co, Toyo Construction Co and the
Penta Ocean Construction Co
joint venture with TOA Corp and
Shimuzu Corp. A fourth contender,
Taisei Corp, pulled out just
before the March deadline.
“We will definitely sit down
with PCI [Pacific Consultants International]
to address the piles
issue and get the technical evaluation
committee of the BAC and
JBIC [Japan Bank for International
Cooperation] to come to a
sensible and technically sound
decision,” said Victor Mamon,
SBMA senior deputy administrator
for operations.
Critics regard the exclusion of
spirally-welded pipes as a violation
of JBIC policy as its procurement
guidelines state that “specifications
shall be so worded as to
permit and encourage the widest
possible competition.”
That provision may have been
breached in the case of other materials
required for the project. For
example, PCI specified Prodegol
PU coating from Goldschmidt TBI
GmbH of Germany for the steel
pipe, even though similar products
are available from other countries.
The Philippine Large Diameter
Pressure Pipe Manufacturers’
Association has expressed dismay
over the SBMA’s failure to address
the issue, saying it had contacted
Victor Mamon last November -
four months before the actual bidding.
The association says three of
its members are prepared to install
a mill in Subic to produce
spirally-welded piles with a maximum
thickness of 22mm.
According to local observers,
if SBMA sticks to its preference
for seamless and longitudinallywelded
pipes, the most likely beneficiary
would be Tokyo-based
Nippon Kokan.
Tanzanian
ports push
inland
Port authorities managing the
main four Tanzanian ports of Dares-Salaam,
Mtwara, Tanga and
Zanzibar have launched a concerted
campaign to handle a bigger
share of the cargo market for
the various landlocked states in the
region, which are forced to import
and export most goods
through neighbouring transit
countries.
The four ports have a combined
handling capacity of around
6 mill tons per annum, somewhat
in excess of current demand, and
there is also substantial room for
expansion at Dar- es-Salaam and
Mtwara.
The private consortium now
managing Dar-es-Salaam’s container
terminal, led by Hutchison
Port Holdings (HPH), plans to increase
capacity from 100,000 to
200,000 containers/year by 2010,
partly with the aim of attracting
more contracts from countries in
Tanzania’s hinterland.
The territory covered by the
modern day states of Burundi,
Democratic Republic of Congo
(DRC), Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda
and Zambia has been served by
Tanzania’s ports since long before
the European partition of Africa.
However, over the past 10-15
years, the Kenyan port of Mombasa
and now also the Mozambican
ports of Beira, Maputo
and Nacala have begun to provide
increasingly stiff competition.
With so many landlocked or
virtually landlocked countries in
southern and central Africa, the
amount of cargo at stake is substantial.
PORT NEWS
San Diego digs deep
The California Coastal Commission
has approved a plan that will
see the Port of San Diego’s 40ft
harbour depth dredged to 42ft to
accommodate larger vessels. The
port, which has two cargo terminals,
has suffered from shallow
draughts and the inability of large
ships to reach the terminals without
first offloading part of their
cargo or waiting for high tide. This
does not affect its role as a car import
port because car carriers are
not especially deep draft vessels.
The dredging project is expected
to cost between US$9 mill
and US$30 mill and will remove
some 550,000 yds3 of silt from the
port’s turning basin north of the
Coronado Bridge. It is scheduled
to begin in 2004 and will be completed
in 2005.
It is part of a five-year plan by
the San Diego Unified Port District
targeted at more than doubling
container traffic at the port
and hopefully turning the tide on
the city’s money-losing shipping
business. This year the port is expected
to lose around US$7.6
mill.
Primary products handled
through San Diego include bulk
commodities such as sand, steel,
lumber and paper. In addition, its
refrigeration cargo handling facility,
which opened last October, is
expected to handle about 40,000
containers/year (Dole). The National
City Terminal, located south
of the city, is a primary handling
facility for automobiles and is favoured
by Honda, Acura and
Volkswagen.
PD Port Services claims that the intermodal rail service over its Grimsby
Container Terminal (GCT) on the Humber, UK is attracting an increasing
number of main line operators and shippers to the twice/week feeder service
provided by Norexcel between Grimsby and Rotterdam. The connection
enables customers to switch north Britain origin/destination cargoes away
from congested land routes to southern English ports, argues PD Port services’
managing director Jerry Hopkinson
12
May 2003