Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ) plans to invest as much as ₹48,933 crore to scale up its port at Dhamra in Odisha to handle 314 million tonnes (mt) of cargo.
The country’s biggest private port operator looks to make the eastern coast port as big as its flagship Mundra port in Gujarat on the western coast. Mundra Port is India’s biggest private commercial port.
The expert appraisal committee (EAC) in the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has recommended environmental and coastal regulation zone (CRZ) clearances for the expansion of Dhamra on a revised master plan filed by APSEZ, according to a document reviewed by BusinessLine.
Expansion plans
The Dhamra Port Company Ltd (DPCL), the APSEZ unit that runs the port, currently runs two berths with a capacity to load 25 mt of cargo such as coal, iron ore and lime-stone.
DPCL had earlier secured green and CRZ nod for the second phase of expansion to handle an additional 71.3 mt of dry bulk cargo, liquid and gas cargo including LNG, POL (LPG), other break bulk (clean cargo) and 1 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers.
Out of this approved expansion, 12 mt of LNG component has been transferred to Dhamra LNG Terminal Private Limited.
The planned expansion of Dhamra — one of India’s deepest ports with a depth of 18 metres that allows super capsize ships to dock — will be done in two phases by tweaking the master plan.
Revised master plan
APSEZ will expand Dhamra’s capacity first to 169.5 mt with an investment of ₹17,518 crore over the next five years and then to 314 mt by investing additional ₹31,415 crore by the end of 30 years. The expansion includes container handling facilities with an initial capacity of 3.1 million TEUs which will be expanded to 4.66 million TEUs.
