Andhra tobacco exporters get smooth sailing

CCT places four mainline vessels at Chennai port for their use.

The Chennai Container Terminal (CCT), a private limited terminal managed by the Dubai Ports (DP) World, will in the coming three or four months make available four mainline vessels at the Chennai port for the benefit of tobacco exporters of Andhra Pradesh.

The first one would sail to Europe and the second one would head for West Africa in a fortnight. Two more mainline vessels, one to the US and the other to Asian ports, would be pressed into service in the first quarter of 2007, said Ennarasu Karunesan, chief executive officer of CCT.

These apart, weekly mainline vessels to Thailand and China and daily service to Singapore and Colombo would amply meet traders' demand for early shipment of tobacco.

Interacting with tobacco exporters and traders here, he said the CCT had for the first time in India introduced web-enabled Form 13 (E-form) to facilitate easy container movement. Exporters could e-mail these forms from Guntur itself. The CCI would take care of other things.

He said the CCT also launched 'smart track,' a novel way of tracking the container on its way to the port through SMS from anywhere in India. The customers can call 3636 and enquire about the status of their containers. This value-added service is free of cost and requires no registration.

Consequently, congestion problem at the port, the biggest headache, came down to a large extent as gate opening for the containers would be at the earliest, Karunesan said. However, he advised exporters to bring their containers to the port gate between 10 am and 6 pm, when traffic would be minimal.

He promised to bring to the firm chairman's notice their demands for extension of free time from 15 days to one month, cut in the terminal handling charges and for scrapping surcharge.

He said over 200 groundslots at the port (dedicated yard space) had been reserved for tobacco containers. He said exporters' plea to post two or three fumigation agents would be considered. Now only one congestion charge was being collected instead of 6-8 charges in the past. The port workers' problem has been solved and there would not be any strikes in future.

He said the CCT handled 6,78,152 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) year to date (YTD) from January till October this year. Cargo handling would touch 8,10,000 TEUs by the end of 2006. Over $128 million has been spent to modernise the terminal equipment after the CCT took over from the Chennai port on lease in 2001. The CCT has captured 56 per cent of the cargo market in south India.

Traders sought direct entry of containers into the gate instead of parking them at CFS (container freight station). Checking the sealing at the main gate should be stopped. The sealing put by the excise office at Guntur is enough for the entry of containers into the main gate, he added.