Vallarpadam News

Kochi: The 4.6 km long bridge over the lake Vembanad that connects the new Container Terminal at Vallarpadom near Cochin to Edapally  is the longest in India and an engineering marvel.

The construction of the rail link which forms the heart of ICTT project had to weather heavy odds and cost Rs 360 crore in the making. The first of the series of trials on the rail line was carried on Republic Day when an electric locomotive successfully ran through the line.

The work on the rail link project began in June 2007 but could be completed only in March 2010.

Besides the main bridge, there are four smaller ones built on 1.2 diameter piles driven to an average depth of 55 metres. The pile length totalled 65,000 metres. The bridge passes through three small islands including Mulavukadu, before finally reaching Vallarpadam.

The amount of construction material that went into the project is mind boggling: 11,700 tonnes of reinforced steel, 58,000 tonnes of cement, 99,000 cubic metre of metal aggregates, 73,500 cubic metre of sand, 1,27,000 cubic metre of concrete work and 1,54,308 cubic metre of earth work .

The rail link project was executed by RVNL which was constituted as a special purpose vehicle under the Ministry of Railways.

Kochi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday dedicated to the nation the first phase of the Rs 6,250 crore International Container Transhipment Terminal at nearby Vallarpadam island that would help exporters access mainline container vessels calling at the port. Describing the project as a 'long awaited milestone' in the development of the country's logistics infrastructure, Singh said "it is a symbol of how public-private partnership can contribute to public good."

Singh, who had laid the foundation stone for the project in February 2005, said "I am delighted to see how well this state-of-art terminal has come up."

The absence of a global hub port and the lack of transhipment facilities had put the country's trade at a disadvantage, the PM said. Noting that about 60 per cent of India's export and import containers were transhipped through outside ports like Singapore and Colombo, he said it cost an additional expenditure of $300 per container and an extra 7-10 days of transit time.

With the new facility located at the Special Economic Zone at Vallarpadam island, Indian exporters can now access mainline container vessels calling at one of the most well located ports of India. The construction of the terminal is the centre piece of a comprehensive plan to develop Kochi as an economic and logistical hub of the region, the Prime Minister said.

The project area has been declared SEZ with a road link to connect Vallarpadam with two national highways, besides a 8.5 km rail link connecting the terminal to the railway network. The navigation channels were being deepened which was a challenging task involving the removal of nearly 26 million cubic metres of soil, Singh said.

Stressing the need to vastly increase the use of fuel efficient, environment friendly and safe modes of transport such as inland waterways, Singh said this mode of transportation was very suitable for bulk, containerised and hazardous cargo as is the case world wide. He said the project symbolised the "keen interest" of the United Arab Emirates in investing in India and in promoting stronger business and people-to-people ties between the two countries. The terminal would be an 'enduring symbol' of the close ties India wishes to build with its extended neighbours in West Asia, including the UAE, he said.

Singh said Kerala with its huge diaspora of skilled and enterprising workers, engineers, doctors and other professionals was ideally suited to become the harbinger for these investments.

The first phase of the project, costing over Rs 3200 crore is ready to handle one million TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) per annum. When completed, the terminal will be able to handle four million TEUs per annum. The project will be operated by Dubai Port World (DPW), and has been set up to make Kochi a key centre in the shipping world, reducing India's dependence on foreign ports to handle transhipment, Cochin Port sources said.

Praising the state, the Prime Minister said Kerala is well known not only for its visual beauty, but also for the talent and industry of its people. Kerala already leads the country in many important social indicators of development. "There is no reason why the rich human potential, geographical location and resources cannot be exploited to build Kerala into a front ranking industrial state of the country," he said adding the state should become a model for other states to emulate and follow.

Referring to Kochi, Singh said he visualised in the future, the emergence of several port based service industries and processing centres in its proximity that will take advantage of the reliable and economical logistics to be provided by the terminal.

The Prime Minister said he was pleased that a modern LNG Import and Regasification facility was also being constructed in the Cochin Port Trust area which is expected to be operational by March 2012.

Kochi: Six months after its commissioning, the country’s first ever International Container Transshipment Terminal at Vallarpadam is yet to commence actual operations

With hundreds of containers held up at ICTT and a number of International companies backing out, the terminal is in real crisis.

As many as 416 containers are held up at ICTT for more than a month due to lack of feeder vessles. Already some international shipping companies- CMA CGM, Maersk and ZIM- which had begun mainline operations to ICTT Vallarpadam, went back Colombo for transshipment due to the delay in sending containers from here to destination ports, sources said.

While the terminal is projected to handle an estimate of 7.75 lakh TEUs (Twenty foot equivalent units) of containers in 2011, the 13 available Indian feeder vessels together has a capacity to carry only 12, 156 TEUs at any point of time.

Also these 13 vessels, from SCI, Relay shipping, Gati, Seaways, Jindal and Caravel touch ICTT Vallarpadam only occasionaly.

Due to lack of feeder vessels, the container traffic has not increased much even after the commissioning of ICTT, officials said.

“Compared to the corresponding period last year, there is an increase of only about 4 percentage in container handling. It is much less than what we actually projected to achieve this year. The depth has not become an issue for vessels to call at ICTT,”. Cochin Port Trust Chairman Paul Antony said.

However, stastistics so far dosen’t paint a rosy picture.