cruise vessels. The passenger cruise terminal is located in the West Quay. The Shipping Corporation of India operated regular Chennai–Singapore services till 1984. On an average, 10 international cruise vessels dock in the port each year. The number of tourists visiting the port in 2008–09 was 2,616, which rose to 3,401 in 2009–10. The country's first cruise ship, AMET Majesty, is registered in Chennai and started operations from Chennai on 8 June 2011. The modernised cruise terminal at the port was inaugurated on 12 October 2018 at a cost of 172.4 million. Spread over 2,880 square meters with ground, mezzanine, and first floors, the terminal has 10 immigration counters, with plans to increasing it to 20. It is equipped with four escalators and a cafeteria on the mezzanine floor. It has a capacity to seat 168 passengers on the first floor and 132 on the ground floor, with three-seater airport chairs. The building is powered by a 250-kw solar power panel provided at the rooftop. Operations The port handles around 8 million tonnes of coal for clients such as the Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board, Karnataka Power Corporation, cement plants of Tamil Nadu and independent power producers in northern Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra Pradesh. The coal handling for the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board was transferred to the Ennore Port. In 2005, as part of pollution-control measure, the port has installed wind curtains made of ultraviolet resistant fabric along the harbour's beachfront for over 1.5 km to the east of the coal terminal to prevent wind carrying coal dust into the city at a cost of 3.7 million. In 2008, the port has also installed a semi-mechanised closed coal conveyor system comprising two streams with a capacity of 15 million metric tons/annum and a handling rated capacity of 1,500 metric tons/hour/stream and running for a length of 5 km at two berths, namely, Jawahar Dock IV and VI, at a cost of 430 million to transfer the coal to the individual coal plots at the southern end of the port, from where the cargo will be transported by rail to respective destinations, thus preventing pollution from coal dust and eliminating movement of coal-carrying trucks within the port. The conveyor runs at an elevation of 10–13 m and has provision for longitudinal movement along the road to the plots and transverse movement for stacking coal at individual plots. Coal discharged into