Shipping goods in containers to overseas customers through Jawaharlal Nehru port, India’s busiest container gateway, located near Mumbai has been hit by a labour dispute at one of the three terminals at the port.
Gateway Terminals India Pvt. Ltd, the terminal run by a joint venture between Denmark’s APM Terminals Management BV and Container Corp. of India Ltd (Concor), has shut the gates through which export containers are brought to the terminal for the last 10 days.
This is due to a three-week-old go-slow by the trailer operators at Gateway Terminals. Trailer operators pick up boxes arriving on ships from the wharf and cart them to the container storing yard of the terminal and then move the containers from the yard to the wharf to be loaded onto ships.
Gateway Terminals has outsourced this activity to a third party contractor who is seeking more money to do the job.
“Gateway Terminals has closed its export gate,” said S.N. Maharana, chief manager operations of JN port. The closure was necessitated by inadequate space to store containers inside the terminal, which in turn has triggered a blockage on the road leading up to the port.
“Shippers sending their export containers through JN port are facing the worst crisis at a time when exports are showing definite signs of a surge in the wake of growing demand for Christmas cargoes from the US and Europe,” said R. Venkatesh, vice- president of the Western India Shippers Association or WISA, which represents about 130 exporters and freight forwarders.
India’s exports grew by 13.47% during October 2013 to $27.27 billion from $24.03 billion a year earlier, making it the fourth straight month when exports grew in double digits, according to India’s commerce ministry.
The closure of the terminal’s export gate has started to bite exporters and shipping lines, WISA’s Venkatesh said.
“The terminal is choked. It has resorted to operational restrictions leading to huge shutouts of export containers, missed ship connections and abnormal delays in shipments of export cargoes and clearance of imported containers. The shipping lines have advised the shippers that any additional cost charged by the terminal has to be passed on to cargo interests,” Venkatesh added.
JN port’s Maharana said that some of the export containers of Gateway Terminals are being sent through the other two facilities run separately by the government-owned port itself and Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal Pvt. Ltd or NSICT (run by Dubai’s DP World Pvt. Ltd).
However, this has only added to the problems.
“Container shipping lines have already adopted dual berthing concept by dealing berth slots with NSICT and JN port container terminal, either on additional payment basis or some other business commitments. These costs will be passed on to the exporters and importers,” said a senior executive with a container freight station that services the port.
“Due to Gateway Terminals remaining closed for export intake, container inventory levels at other two terminals has shot up to their threshold handling limits, causing serious berthing delay, poor ship rate and massive export traffic queue running almost 15-20 kms on the national highway approach roads connecting the port,” said a Mumbai-based executive of a container carrier based in East Asia.
Further, the roads leading to port gates are also fully jammed with huge container traffic. And because of this, transporting containers to port has become very difficult, he added.
Between April and October, JN port handled 2.37 million standard containers, less than the 2.49 million standard containers it handled during the same period a year ago.
Source:- livemint.com
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