PSA International aims to broaden its footprint in India by venturing into warehousing and forging alliances for inland container management. The company is actively eyeing opportunities at the upcoming Vadhavan port in Maharashtra.
PSA International, the Singapore-based operator of the world's largest transshipment hub, plans to expand its presence in India in warehousing, besides forming partnerships for inland container handling.
Speaking to ET, Gobu Selliaya, managing director at PSA India said his company is actively exploring opportunities in the upcoming Vadhavan port in Maharashtra.
"We have the largest terminal in Mumbai...we may want to partner with someone who has extensive inland nodes to create a complete solution," said Selliaya, elaborating on PSA's plans for India. PSA is also exploring partnerships with shipping lines, inland container depots, and container freight stations, he added.
The company is also in talks with train operators who can facilitate and maximise utilisation of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC). The entire length of the freight railway corridor from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to the Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Navi Mumbai is expected to be commissioned later this year.
With the inauguration of its Phase 2 expansion earlier this month, PSA Mumbai is poised to become India's largest container terminal, doubling its annual handling capacity to 4.8 million twenty-feet equivalent units (TEUs).
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One TEU denotes a shipping container internally measuring about 20 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 8 feet tall.
The capacity expansion follows a SGD 1.7 billion ($1.3 billion) investment commitment by PSA under the public-private partnership (PPP) model, the largest foreign direct investment from Singapore in India to date.
India currently handles around 31-32 million TEU cargo annually.
On growth in the containerised cargo market in India, Selliaya said, "We have a population of 1.4 billion people today. We think that that is a bit underserved." He said domestic container handling capacity can potentially rise to 50-60 million in the 10-15 years.
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These goals hinge on India quadrupling its annual port handling capacity to around 10,000 million tonnes by 2047. The proposed mega ports at Vadhavan, and Galathea Bay in Andaman and Nicobar are crucial for achieving these goals. "We are very much interested in Vadhavan," Selliaya said, adding PSA is keen on the public-private partnership (PPP) mode under the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model for this project.
