Kandla port to develop four new berths for Rs 755 crore

AHMEDABAD: Four companies have been identified for the Rs 755-crore project to develop new berths at Gujarat’s Kandla port. Private firms Ras Infraport, Sical Logistics, IMC and PSL will work on build-operate-transfer basis with the Centre and bring cargo handling capacity of the country’s largest port closer to 100 million tonnes.

Companies executing BOT projects charge users and transfer them back to the government after recovering their investment. Tenders for the four new berths were invited twice after improving the revenue-sharing arrangement with the bidding companies.

Kandla Port Trust chairman PD Waghela said the port will now have 16 berths and could handle additional 8 million tonnes. The port can now service vessels with a draught of up to 13 metres. “Berths numbering 13 to 16 will be developed under the new project. The total capacity will be raised from 85 million tonnes to 93 million tonnes. We will further increase the capacity to 100 million tonnes by 2013,” he said.

Kandla port handles cargo like petroleum oil, fertilisers, coal, timber, food grain, machinery, salt and containers. The western coast port has handled 31.85 million tonnes of oil products till November, a rise of 2.80% from a last financial year.

Kandla port handled 79.5 million tonnes in the current financial year, 10% more than it did in the last fiscal.
KPT vice-president MA Bhaskaracharya said offshore berthing facilities will be developed at Tuna Tekra, 10 km away from Kandla, to raise annual capacity by 12-14 million tonnes per annum. A single point mooring (SPM) too is being developed at Vira in the Gulf of Kutch and the work will start in six months. “Once completed, the total capacity will rise to 115 million tonnes,” he said.

The port has a satellite oil port at Vadinar in Jamnagar district to handle crude and finished petroleum products. Vadinar handled over 36 million tonnes of crude import and exported over 7 million tonnes of finished petroleum product during fiscal 2009-10. Recently KPT has introduced e tendering system to boost the simplification of procedures, expedite the process of tendering, make it transparent and reduce the time-frame to finalise the tenders.

Development of port land was pushed ahead as part of National Maritime Development Programme conducted on Public Private Partnership (PPP) basis with the assistance of central government. Bhaskarachar also disclosed that KPT had awarded the dredging contract, which would enable the Port to maintain its assured draught. At Kandla, maintenance dredging has to be done on day to day basis to avoid any adverse effect on the port and trade. The new contract was awarded for `212 crore, less than `44 crore, of the estimated cost of `256 crore through global competitive bidding process.