TUTICORIN: By berthing a 277 meter long container vessel on Sunday, the V O Chidambaranar (VOC) Port Authority has handled the longest ship till date.
The previous longest vessel that was handled by the port was the 268.8 meter long and 32.2 meter wide MV Wan Hai 510 on December 12, 2018. On Sunday, the mother vessel MV MSC Vidhi with a length overall of 277.2 meters – eight meters more than the ship handled 39 months ago – and 40 metres wide reached Dakshin Bharat Gateway Terminal at VOC Port.
MSC Vidhi the Liberia flagged ship with a capacity of 5,770 TEUs and draught of 12.5 meters reached Tuticorin from Port Louis in the Mauritius. After handling 1,564 TEUs of import containers and 1,275 TEUs of export containers the vessel will leave Tuticorin on Monday and head to Colombo in Sri Lanka and to Shanghai and Dalian in China over the next few days. Port authority chairman T K Ramachandran who received the vessel told reporters that it is an important day in the history of the port.
