Vizhinjam port, which has dealt with almost 1 million TEUs after beginning business operations in December 2024, now has an 800-m lengthy container ship jetty able to dealing with one container mom ship and two feeder vessels at a time.
Phase two will improve the size of the container berth to 2000-m lengthy and maintain three mom ships and a number of other feeder vessels on the identical time.
While Phase 1 costing rather less than ₹9,000 crore, noticed the monetary participation of the Kerala and the Union governments together with via viability hole funding, the finance for Phase 2 costing ₹10,000 crore will likely be fully raised by the Adani Ports & SEZ Ltd (APSEZ), the ports and logistics firm of the Adani Group.
In 2015, the Kerala authorities had signed an settlement with APSEZ to develop the port and Adani has a 40-year concession to construct, function, and switch the port, with a provision for a 20-year extension. The port commenced trial operations in July 2024, receiving its first mothership, the San Fernando.
The port has a pure deep draft of some 20 m near the shore that requires little dredging.
During the inauguration, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had stated that 75% of India’s transshipment operations have been beforehand carried out at international ports, resulting in vital income loss for the nation.
And Vizhinjam will assist make sure that India’s cash will serve India. Port officers say the port is anticipated to decrease logistics prices for Indian producers by 30-40%, enhancing the nation’s export competitiveness.
So far, all of the containers dealt with by the port have been transshipment cargo – 60% worldwide and 40% Indian.
The port has dealt with no exim cargo — containers leaving and coming into Vizhinjam by highway or rail after customs clearance.
Port managers say that exim cargo will develop to account for 20%, even because the second section enlargement occurs. They are citing the unique rail line from Vizhinjam port to Balaramapuram that’s being laid by the Government of Kerala and is anticipated to be accomplished by 2028. A highway connecting the port and NH 66 (Mumbai- Kanyakumari) is sort of able to open, port managers say. These would assist Vizhinjam’s inland connectivity via highway and rail and facilitate exim cargo.
Merchant ships on world commerce want periodic adjustments of crew.
On the East-West sea route the place Vizhinjam is situated, Singapore and Reunion Island are distinguished crew change factors.
Vizhinjam port officers are working with the federal government to determine a global crew change facility, leveraging the locational benefit.
A crew change facility may doubtlessly enhance native financial system via lodges, eating places and different services serving seafarers in transit.
Some of the biggest container vessels of 400 m size and capability of some 24,000 TEUs have docked at Vizhinjam.
Port managers recall a totally loaded Claude Girardet, one other 399-m lengthy mega container vessel, taking a detour and steaming into Vizhinjam after the crew discovered that some 10 containers needed to be restacked for the sake of ship stability and security. In a couple of hours, the containers have been restacked and Girardet set sail. Vizhinjam boasts of being a hi-tech port with operators at an air-conditioned distant management station dealing with the cranes on the container stacks in addition to shipside.
Automated dealing with
The port has commissioned 8 Quay Cranes which can be operated remotely from a management room and 20 absolutely automated Cantilever Rail Mounted Gantry cranes performing container operations with out the necessity of a human crane operator. The complete container dealing with operations are executed by automation methods deployed by ABB methods, who’re the world leaders in container terminal automation, he stated. For monitoring and controlling ship operations, a complicated Digital Twin system is applied, that routinely collects and assimilates machine and operational occasions, utilizing IoT methods, in real-time on a big 3D video wall, enabling the controllers to be proactive and reply to operational exceptions with out delays.
The port has additionally adopted superior sensor and radar-based expertise together with synthetic intelligence to successfully monitor, coordinate, and handle massive container ships as they arrive to dock and depart after unloading.
(The author was at Vizhinjam on the invitation of the corporate)
