| The Port of Visakhapatnam (also known as Vizag) is on India's eastern central coast facing the Bay of Bengal. Under British rule, it was called Waltair. The Port of Visakhapatnam has been inhabited since at least 260 BC. Port History In the middle 1600s, the British East India Company built a factory that was soon occupied by Aurangzeb's army. In 1735, a Dutch colony was established at the Port of Visakhapatnam, but it was transferred back to the British in 1765. The Visakhapatnam Port Trust was established in 1933 to operate and develop the port. Japanese planes attacked the port in 1942 and, in 1947, India's Eastern Naval Command made Vizag its base. The Scindia Shipyard was started in 1949 and, after independence, it was nationalized and renamed Hindustan Shipyard. Port Commerce The Port of Visakhapatnam's inner harbor covers 100 hectares and is 10.7 meters deep at high tide. Its outer harbor covers 200 hectares and is almost 17.1 meters at high tide. It has covered storage of over 36.8 hectares with a capacity for over 800 thousand tons of cargo. Bulk handling facilities at the Port of Visakhapatnam include a mechanized ore-handling plant primarily for iron ore. First installed in 1965, it resulted from an agreement for the long-term export of iron ore to Japan. The Port's coking coal facilities offer a deep-draft berth in the outer harbor that is over 305 meters long with a depth of 14.5 meters. The coking coal facilities also include five multi-purpose berths in the inner harbor and total open area for 400 thousand tons. The port also contains facilities for aluminum, fertilizers and raw materials, and food grains. Crude oil handling facilities at the Port of Visakhapatnam include a deep-draft (to 17 meters) oil tanker terminal that can accommodate tankers up to 150 thousand deadweight tons and pipelines that allow the discharge of over 5 thousand tons per hour. In 2003, the Visakha Container Terminal Pvt. Ltd. began operating. It's the deepest container terminal in the country, can accommodate vessels up to 14.9 meters draft, and has a dedicated rail facility. The terminal offers a 17-hectare paved container yard. In the 2006-2007 season, 56.4 million tons of cargo passed through the Port of Visakhapatnam. This included 18.2 million tons of crude oil, 14.7 million tons of iron ore and iron pellets, and 9.7 million tons of thermal and coking coal. Port railways moved almost 30 million tons of cargo. Cruising and Travel Passenger ships are available from the Port of Visakhapatnam to other Indian destinations, and the state's Shipping Corporation of India has large passenger ships that move both passengers and cargo between the Port of Visakhapatnam and Port Blair (over 1600 meters to the east) on India's Andaman Nicobar Islands. A search on the Cruise Compete website found a Silversea Cruise on the Silver Wind in February 2009 that visits the major ports on India's coast. |
