Reefer container keeps turning up despite port authority’s most effective efforts
Poor delivery of refrigerated containers, largely known as reefer containers, applied to move perishable goods continues to be a significant hurdle for the Chattogram Interface regardless of the recent improvements in the release of several other containers.
Subsequently, the port has go out of its potential in the yards designated to retail store refrigerated containers -- a predicament that's hampering the unloading of import containers from the vessels as the reefer containers are kept at the upper rows and delays in discharging them keeps back the entire discharge of other import containers, lingering ships' stay and increasing the entire turnaround time.
It has prompted the traffic department of the port authority on Tuesday to warn that it would impose four times the store rent on reefer containers if importers usually do not increase delivery by May 16.
The port has granted 100 per cent waiver on store rent for all import containers until Saturday as part of its efforts to be rid of congestion.
Some 2,200 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent models) of reefer containers, which need fixed plug-in tips for continuous electricity supply, could be accommodated in the port yards. But in early April, the amount of reefer containers hit 3,000 TEUs.
To enhance the capability further, the layers for storing reefer containers have been recently raised to five from three previously using apparatus which has high lifting-ability, said Enamul Karim, director for site visitors of the Chattogram Slot Authority (CPA).
This has extended the storage capacity of reefers to 2,600 TEUs, he added.
Even after that, the port ran out of capacity in Tuesday after the amount of reefers reached 2,740 TEUs just as daily delivery has dropped by simply half of normal to 150 TEUs to 200 TEUs, according to port officials.
Usually before Ramadan and the summertime fruit import increases and the same happened this season as well.
But almost all of the letters of credits against the imports were opened up before coronavirus became a worldwide pandemic, according to Karim.
As a result of countrywide shutdown since March 26 to flatten the curve on coronavirus, fruit revenue dropped off locally, prompting the importers to hold their products in the slot, he added.
Sensing a delay, a vessel, TR Porthos, which was booked to carry 500 TEUs from Colombo left behind almost all of the reefer containers in the Sri Lankan slot and earned only 80 TEUs, said Ajmir Hossain Chowdhury, assistant general supervisor of the vessel's regional agent, Marco Shipping Company (BD).
The vessel berthed at a port's jetty on May 11 but cannot unload an individual reefer container in the last two days because of the space shortage, he said.
Were the unloading on schedule, the ship could have gone the port yesterday, but its stay might linger now.
