A cargo ship at Cochin Port (File | EPS)
KOCHI: The arrival of ‘Penna Suraksha’, the first vessel carrying 25,000 tonnes of cement from Krishnapatnam, the other day marked the beginning of operations of the fourth cement terminal at the Cochin Port. "This modal shift in the transport of cement from road/rail to sea is another step towards promoting coastal shipping as a cost-effective and environment-friendly means of transportation as envisaged under the Sagarmala Programme of the Ministry of Shipping.
Cement being a high-volume, low-value product, lower-cost sea transport is very important as a game changer in logistics," an official release said.The requirement of cement in rebuilding Kerala is expected to increase. Coastal shipping of building material like cement is economic and will help the rebuilding process in a cost-effective manner with lower logistic costs, it said.
Presently, three cement terminals - Ambuja, UltraTech and Zuari -are in operation and handle 7.83 lakh tonnes of cement annually. The bagging terminal of Penna Cement Ltd is the fourth such terminal in Cochin Port. The terminal has been set up in 1.14 hectare leased by the Cochin Port Trust and is expected to handle 3 lakh tonnes of cement annually.
The terminal has been designed to connect to Q6 berth at Ernakulam Wharf, where ships carrying cement from Krishnapatnam plant will be berthed for transfer of the cargo to the silos through pneumatic suction. The terminal has four silos of a total capacity of 20,000 MT, and has the designed capacity of 0.50 MMTPA in cement bagging.
The Cochin Packing Terminal has an annual throughput of 0.30 MMT, to begin with. Cochin Port has facilitated the installation of automated cement bagging units by allotting land adjacent to berths to cement companies. Cement is brought in bulk through ships, and is transferred to silos on the adjacent land through pipelines. The port is expected to handle 1.5 million MT of cement by 2020. Malabar Cements, a Kerala government undertaking, has also been allotted land at Cochin Port for setting up a bagging terminal.
