The facility, jointly managed by J M Baxi Ports & Logistics and CMA Terminals, will take over the terminal previously run by State-owned Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority; it will start accepting export boxes from 6 February.
Nhava Sheva Free Port Terminal Pvt Ltd, an equal joint venture between J M Baxi Ports & Logistics Ltd and CMA Terminals Holding, will start operations from 10 February at the container terminal it acquired from the State-owned Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA) last year.
Nhava Sheva Free Port Terminal said it will begin accepting export containers from 6 February, the terminal said in a notice to trade.
CMA Terminals Holding is a unit of CMA CGM S A, the world’s third largest container shipping firm.
Aniruddha Lele, currently with CMA CGM India Pvt Ltd, has been named the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Nhava Sheva Free Port Terminal. Anil Narayanan, who was the Deputy Chief Operating Officer of Visakha Container Terminal Pvt Ltd, the facility run by J M Baxi Ports & Logistics at Visakhapatnam Port, has been named the COO of the terminal.
The J M Baxi Ports & Logistics- CMA Terminals Holding consortium won the bid on a global tender by placing the highest royalty price bid of Rs4,520 per twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) for the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Container Terminal (JNPCT).
The deal involves upgrading and mechanising the terminal with a quay length of 680 metres to improve utilization, crane, and berth productivity to raise the capacity to 1.8 million TEUs from 1.5 million TEUs, with an investment of Rs 872.16 crores.
Nhava Sheva Free Port Terminal will be revamping the existing container terminal previously run by the port authority in two phases and is expected to be fully completed by the fourth quarter of 2024, it said in the trade notice. Initially, the Nhava Sheva Free Port Terminal will be operating one berth of 340 metres with 5 quay cranes for handling container ships and will be subsequently further strengthened. The other berth area will be widened to increase the rail span from the existing 20 metres to 30 metres. On completion of the upgrade, the terminal will have 9 quay cranes, 27 rubber tyred gantry cranes (RTGC’s) and 3 rail mounted gantry cranes (RMGC’s) to help load and unload containers.
“This will enable the Nhava Sheva Free Port Terminal to handle large super post Panamax vessels and cater to the increasing demand for container handling in the region,” the terminal operator said.
The terminal will be equipped with the latest technology and equipment offering high productivity and facilitate faster turnaround of ships, it added.
The Nhava Sheva Free Port Terminal will be the only facility out of the five operating at Jawaharlal Nehru Port – India’s biggest State-run container gateway – to get the freedom to fix market determined rates.
