Major Port Visakhapatnam Port Authority has registered an overall growth in its cargo handled for the first 6 months of this fiscal i.e. April to Sept 2022.

As per the figures obtained from IPA, the port witnessed growth in POL, Coal and Container traffic. VPA handled POL of 8MT in H1FY23 compared to 6.6MT in the same period last year. 

Coal Volumes Zoom

There was substantial increase in Coal volumes. Thermal coal more than doubled from 4.1MT in H1FY22 to 8.3MT in H1FY23 while coking coal increased from 2.4MT to 2.7MT in the same period.

VPA’s Deputy chairman, Mr Durgesh Kumar Dubey attributed the substantial growth in coal to GoI’s earlier mandate to state gencos to import at least 10% of their total coal requirement for blending purposes. ‘Due to the 10% mandate given by the government of India to power houses to import coal for blending purposes we saw a surge in our coal handling’ said the deputy chairman speaking to Vizag Industrial Scan.

Container traffic witnessed a slight increase with the port handling 262,000 TEUs in the first 6 months of FY 23 compared to 256,000 TEUs in the corresponding period last year.

Raw fertilizers too increased marginally from 0.734 MT to 0.794 MT.

Iron Ore pellets however declined during this period wherein it fell from 7.5MT handled in April-Sept 2021 to 6.9MT in April-Sept 2022.Overall VPA handled a total of 38.54 MT of cargo between the April-Sept 2022 period compared to 33.40MT in the same period last year thereby registering a growth of 15.39%. VPA recorded the second highest growth among all major ports in this period while Kamarajar Port recorded the highest growth at 16.40%.