One more container feeder vessel M V Kinship Bangar has commenced its operation from New Mangalore Port Trust from Saturday.
The vessel with a capacity of 354 TEUs came from JNPT for loading export containers and will sail back to JNPT. The frequency of the vessel will be once in eight days. The vessel has 85 reefer points which is specially designed for handling reefer cargo from the west coast. M/s Seaways Shipping Ltd. are the feeder operator/agent and M/s HML Agencies the Stevedores. The vessel was welcomed by Arvind Singh, IRS, Commissioner of Customs in the presence of NMPT Deputy Chairman M A Bhaskarachar and other officers of the Port and representatives of Seaways shipping.
The container traffic at the Port is showing upward trend since more exporters and importers started moving their cargo .
During the current year 2007-08, the Port has so far handled 8,128 TEUs upto August 2007 as against 6,139 TEUs handled during the corresponding period of last year and thereby registered a growth of 32.42 per cent.
So far there was only one container feeder line - Bengal Tigerlines operating through the port. Now the connectivity is to JNPT and Colombo.
To cope up with the growing container traffic, the Port is gearing up to provide more infrastructure to handle more containers. Reach Stacker with a capacity of 45 T has already been procured and put into operation in addition to 104 tonne capacity mobile crane. Order has also been placed for procurement of one more Reach Stacker.
