Tamil Nadu’s two major ports Chennai Port Authority (ChPA) and Kamarajar Port (KPL) have jointly exported around 380,000 vehicles in FY23. In FY22, both the ports had exported 306,000 units, thereby making a jump of 24% in FY23.
While ChPA recorded a 36% increase in export of cars to 231,412 units, up from 170,482 in FY22, KPL handled 148,307 automobile units in FY23 against 135,702 automobile units in FY22, an increase of 9.29%.
Out of the three players, Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors accounted for a major share of exports from ChPA. Hyundai exported 150,000 lakh cars, Kia 81,000 cars and Ford Motors 555 units. Ford stopped its operations since June, said Sunil Paliwal, chairman ChPA & CMD of KPL.
In the case of KPL, long-term agreements for the use of port facilities signed with Maruti Suzuki India, Caterpillar India and PCA Automobiles India. KPL’s agreement with Renault Nissan Alliance (NMIPL) has been renewed on March 17, 2023, for the next five years with provision to extend for another five years.
From KPL in FY23, Nissan and Renault exported 95,187 vehicles, Ford 16,598, Isuzu 16, 621, Daimler 4,531, Toyota 3,623, Maruti 4,711 and other 7,036
Paliwal said: “Currently, KPL can handle about 16,500 cars at any given point of time. We are adding another parking yard to accommodate 3,500 cars, taking the total to 20,000 cars. This will be the largest parking yards among the 12 major ports in the country.”
Briefing about the FY23 performance of ChPA, he said around 48.95 million metric tonne (MMT) of cargo handled at 0.8% growth from 48.56 MMT last fiscal. The port recorded a 24% increase in crude oil handling to 11.36 MMT from 9.19 MM. ChPA recorded a `150.26 crore net surplus, highest in the last 13 years.
“ We are developing a new warehouses with an area of around 20,000 sq m and creating a multi-level car parking for storage of over 3,500 cars,” he said.
A multi-modal logistics park is being developed at Mapeddu on 184.27 acres which will provide cargo aggregation facility, warehousing and cold storage at a cost of Rs 1423.5 crore.
In FY23, KPL handled 43.51 MMT cargo throughput in 2022-23 as against 38.74 MMT in FY22 showing an increase of 12.31%. During the year, the cargo profile of KPL constituted 59.36% of dry bulk cargo, 24.41% of container cargo, 11.1% of liquid bulk, and remaining 5.13% of break bulk cargo.
Coal handling at KPL has increased by 13% with 24.24 MMT throughput as against 21.48 MMT. Container handling at KPL has an increase of 14.55%, around 5,50,151 TEUs were handled in 2022-23 as against 4,80,257 TEUs. KPL has crossed `1,000 crore income mark for the first time during FY23 showing an increase of 17.82% over 2021-22 income of Rs 850.84 crore. It registered a net surplus (PBT) of `669.93 crore in FY23 with an increase of 24.39% against the PBT of `538.59 crore.