Author(s) Name:
Febin Wilfred
Abstract
India is dotted with a long coastline spanning 7,600 kilometers, forming one of the biggest peninsulas in the world. It is serviced by 13 major ports (12 government and 1 corporate) and 187 notified minor and intermediate ports. The Shipping Industry is one of the most cyclic industries. Being a global industry, it is affected by a whole gamut of factors which range from world economic condition, political events, natural disasters to age of existing vessels, new vessel delivery schedules and government regulations amongst others. The steady increase in container traffic has pushed these industries towards operating larger ships. It was projected that there would be approximately 490 very large vessels (approximately 130 of these would be post panamax ships with the size of 10,000 TEU or above) deployed on routes to and from Asia by the year 2006.These ships provided economies of scale due to reduction in the per unit shipping cost. This development has resulted in the establishment of selected aggregation centers along the sea routes, which act as major Transshipment hubs. The draft (depth) restrictions at most of the Indian Ports prevent mother vessels from calling and hence creating a bottleneck to transship India bound cargo in India. Ports of Colombo, Singapore, Dubai and Port Klang act as Transshipment hubs for almost 45% of Indian bound container cargo, earning around $ 350 million p.a. Development of a Transshipment hub capable of handling big ships would help winning back the Indian cargo being handled in these ports. India’s first International Container Transshipment Terminal (ICTT) in the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at Vallarpadam Island will turn India into a key player in the International trade map. When fully developed, the ICTT, a part of the expansion project at the Cochin Port, would be the largest individual terminal in India and will make Cochin a key centre in the shipping world, reducing India’s dependence on foreign ports to handle transshipment requirements.
Keywords:
Feasibility, International Container Transshipment Terminal, Pivotal Hub.
Please cite this article as:
Febin Wilfred (2019). Feasibility Study on the development of the International Container Transshipment Terminal (ICTT) into a pivotal hub in Cochin. International Journal of Recent Research and Applied Studies, 6, 9(2), 6-8.
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