The two major ports in Chennai have successfully evacuated most of the imported containers from their terminals via road and rakes post the COVID-19 lockdown.

“Currently, Chennai Port Trust (ChPT) has 11,000 containers for transshipment and they are being evacuated on a regular basis,” said P. Raveendran, chairman, ChPT. “As inventories are at manageable levels, we don’t foresee traffic or container congestion in our port,” he said.

Asserting Stating that more than 40,000 containers were lying in various container freight stations (CFSs), he said ports in Chennai cannot be blamed for it as these imported containers were already cleared for onward movement. The imported containers were lying in various CFSs for want of truck drivers, permission to move around and closure of companies, among other issues.

Since the lockdown, about 1,500 containers were being evacuated on a daily basis from ChPT through road and rakes. Prior to the lockdown, the port handled about 3,000 containers a day.

Meanwhile, Kamarajar Port Ltd. (KPL) has close to 8,000 containers for evacuation. “The containers will be moved by road and some by rakes, We are also planning to bring in one more rake to move the containers to hinterland in Whitefield” said Sunil Paliwal, CMD, KPL.

With regard to car exports, ChPT has about 2,000 cars belonging to Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors parked in its yard, Mr. Raveendran said they would be shipped on April 30 to Namibia. The inventory of cars meant for exports had come down by 50% in the last one month.

About 800 cars, meant for export, are stuck in the parking yard of KPL for exports. The next RoRo vessel is expected to berth on May 6, Mr. Paliwal said.