Mangaluru (K'taka), Jul 4 (PTI) The New Mangalore Port Authority achieved yet another milestone as the first mainline container vessel MSC Erminia made a port call here.

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A release from NMP here on Monday said ‘MSC Erminia' is one of the largest container vessels in the world and its arrival here on Sunday heralded a new era. The ship has a length of 276.5 metres and a draft of 12.8 metres.

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The vessel is carrying 1,771 TEUs and 1,265 units of import containers. A TEU or Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit is a unit of measurement derived from the dimensions of a 20 feet standardised shipping container.

The vessel was greeted by traditional water cannons and container discharging was flagged off by port authority chairman Venkat Ramana Akkaraju.

The ship's captain R D Pais and his deputy captain Rajnikant piloted the vessel alongside. The ship is likely to turn around on Monday or Tuesday.

Expressing happiness over the arrival of the first mainline container vessel at the port, Ramana said the port authority has scaled up its on-shore infrastructure to global standards.

The arrival of the mainline container vessel operator signals that Mangaluru, Karnataka and the hinterland of the port now has a facility that will facilitate higher import-export activities. This is also a sign of the port heralding a higher phase of growth, he said.

New Mangalore Port had been getting mainline vessels in the petroleum sector often to offload LPG and crude for its Mangalore Refineries and Petrochemicals (MRPL) jetty. Under the Central government's Gati Shakti programme, the port has a few more developmental projects under its belt, the release said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)