Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ), JSW Infrastructure Ltd, Navayuga Engineering Co Ltd and QTerminals L.L.C have applied on a tender floated by State-owned Deendayal Port Authority to build a multipurpose cargo berth at Tuna Tekra with an investment of Rs1,719.22 crore.
The last date for submission of qualification documents for the 18.33 million tonnes (mt) capacity berth ended last week.
Deendayal Port Authority runs the Kandla port in Gujarat which serves the Northern India hinterland, including the land-locked states of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat.
The present optimal handling capacity of the existing dry cargo berths at Kandla, including barge jetties at bunder basin, Tuna and IFFCO Barge Jetty (excluding containers), is 59.96 mt.
Deendayal Port handled 127.100 mt of cargo in FY22 of which containers were 4,93,000 TEUs (8,659 mt or 6.7 percent) while 69.814 mt (about 55 percent) was liquid cargo and 48.627 mt (38.3 percent) was dry cargo.
The port authority is seeking to build additional facilities to cater to the expected recovery in economic growth of the country, steadily growing dry cargo traffic and over-utilized dry cargo handling infrastructure at Kandla Port, a port official said.
The gap between the projected traffic and allocated traffic has been estimated based on the traffic forecast from FY 2021 to FY 2030. The projected traffic gap by the year 2026 is 2.85 mt and by 2030 is 27.49 mt.
The planned facility will be designed to handle multipurpose cargo such as food grains, fertilizers, coal, ores and minerals and steel.
Deendayal port currently has 16 cargo berths that can dock at least 17 ships at a time.
In FY 23, Deendayal port hopes to handle over 130 mt of cargo.
“Our target is to reach 200 mt by 2030, that is our main goal,” Deendayal Port Authority Chairman S K Mehta told ET Infra in July.
The multi-purpose cargo terminal can handle ships of 1,00,00 to 2,10,000 dead weight tons (dwt) and up to 15 metre draft. Depth alongside the berth will be 16.5 metres.
The multipurpose berth will have a concession period of 30 years but under certain conditions it can be extended up to 50 years. The operator will be free to fix tariffs. The new model concession agreement (MCA) for port contracts is flexible and all that flexibility will be available for the planned multipurpose cargo berth, Deendayal Port Authority Chairman Mehta added.
