Kozhikode: Beypore port is excited to receive its first container ship, 'M.V Karuthal' carrying eight containers of ceramic tiles on April 11. The ship, owned by Trans Asian Shipping Services Private Limited, will link Dharamtar in Maharastra with Beypore, Kochi and Kollam ports. "The ship will carry tiles, steel coils and general cargo from Dharamtar to Kerala. On the return leg, cargo such as tyres, latex and coir products will be carried," said Beypore Port Officer Captain Ashwani Prathap. The same vessel had anchored at Beypore on an experimental basis in March 2013. "There were no infrastructure facilities then. Now we have a huge container crane which was imported from Germany spending Rs 17.5 crore and Reach Stacker (vehicle used for handling intermodal cargo containers in medium sized ports)," added Mr Prathap.
He said that there would be 60 containers in the next trip by the ship. Apart from streamlining the port-oriented commercial business, the container arrival would reduce the transportation of cargo via road by 50 per cent. "Karuthal is a 1,600 metric tone (MT) capacity ship and was operating on the Jebel Ali-Doha sector in the Middle East as a foreign vessel till last year," said Trans Asian Shipping Services Chairman and Managing Director Johnson Mathew. Initially it will be a fortnightly service with a duration of 12-13 days for a round trip, but will hopefully be converted into a weekly service, according to him.
