A dedicated barge handling facility was recently commissioned at Kandla port's satellite port at Tuna. The facility is geared to handle one million tonnes of traffic annually. With this, it is felt that the congestion at Kandla port will ease, to some extent. But then, apart from the development of the Kandla Port Trust, authorities are rejoicing over the beginning of POL products' export (for the first time Essar Oil exported 2.72 mt from its captive jetty at Vadinar), achieving record monthly throughput of 5.81 mt, loading 30,000 tonnes of iron ore, a non-conventional traffic item for the port, in a ship in less than 12 hours.
Capping it all, between April and October, the port handled a total of 36.57 mt of traffic (28.58 mt in the same period of last year) thus posting 28 per cent growth, much above the national average of 13 per cent during the period.
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