The highest bidder for the Tajpur greenfield port project in West Bengal is Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd. On a 99-year concession, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ) plans to establish a greenfield port in Tajpur, West Bengal’s Purba Medinipur district. When the project’s bids were opened on Wednesday, APSEZ pipped JSW Infrastructure Ltd, the only other bidder, to become the highest bidder. In the first phase of the project, an investment of roughly 7,000 crore is required.
With Tajpur under its purview, Karnataka remains India’s sole coastal state without an APSEZ presence.
The country’s largest port operator got a 30-year concession from the Centre-owned Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port Authority (previously Kolkata Port Trust) in February to mechanise, upgrade, and operate a dry bulk cargo handling facility at Haldia Dock Complex. The berth would be mechanised for 3.744 million tonnes (mt) of dry bulk cargo at a cost of Rs 298.26 crore.
According to an official, the West Bengal government has yet to proclaim the winner of the Tajpur port project because the price bid filed by APSEZ must go through many levels of examination.
Winning Tajpur port deal would help APSEZ build a modern, deep draft, private port in the vicinity of a major port (Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port) like it has done previously in the case of some of the decades old Centre-owned ports. The Tajpur region is near the mineral belts in West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. These States are rich in deposits of iron ore, coal, gemstones and precious stones, limestone, and gold. These States house large power plants, steel manufacturing units, and other manufacturing facilities which drive the demand for bulk commodities such as coal (coking and non-coking), iron ore, limestone, and other containerised products in the region.
