Kerala - Kochi   

Wheat consignment from Australia arrives

Staff Reporter

KOCHI: The first consignment to Kochi of wheat being imported by India arrived on Thursday at the Kochi port's outer channel.

The vessel, Turicum, with a consignment of 36,100 tonnes, is expected to be berthed at quay 6 of the Ernakulam wharf either on Friday or Saturday.

The consignment from Freemantle, Australia, is for the Food Corporation of India (FCI).

Quality testing

Sources said the vessel would be berthed only after the quality of the consignment was tested, for which samples were drawn on Thursday by FCI officials and sent to the Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore.

"The consignment will be discharged manually and repacked. It is expected that about 3,000 tonnes of wheat will be discharged per day, entailing up to 12 days for the entire bulk to be discharged," they said.

The first consignment arrived in Kochi amid reports that several vessels carrying wheat were diverted from Kochi in the wake of allegations that malpractices were jacking up the cost of cargo operations at the port.

Since April, the Food Corporation of India expected about 1.2 lakh tonnes of wheat to arrive in Kochi.

The Centre, in a bid to control the rising price of wheat, decided in February this year to import wheat into the ports of Kochi, Chennai, Mangalore, Visakhapatnam and Tuticorin. The wheat is being imported from the Australian Wheat Board.

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