The VO Chidambaranar Port Authority in Thoothukudi is requesting Expressions of Interest to develop the nine-year-old outer harbour project on a design-build-finance-operate-transfer basis. The outer harbour container development will have a capacity of 4 million teu.
In 2013, the then Congress government announced in the Union Budget the development of the project at a cost of ₹7,500 crore. However, when the BJP formed the government in 2014, the focus turned towards the development of a transshipment container terminal at Vizhinjam in Kerala and the possibility of exploring a similar transshipment port at Inayam in Kanyakumari — the latter did not take off, though.
The Centre has now revived the outer harbour project at the VOC port at a cost of ₹7,200 crore. This includes breakwater costing ₹1,020 crore; berths (₹760 crore); yard development and other shore facilities (₹580 crore); mechanisation (₹3,230 crore) and dredging (₹1,390 crore), the EoI document said.
Infra to build
The concessionaire/PPP operator shall have to carry out the construction of a breakwater on the Northern side (3,450 m length) and the Southern side (2,050 m length), construct two berths of 1,000 m quay length each and mechanise the berths to handle the container cargoes, capital dredging alongside the berth and outer Harbour basin to (-)16.9 m and approach channel to (-)17.4 m to handle 16 m draught vessels.
The concessionaire shall fix the tariff based on market conditions as per the Tariff Guidelines 2021 for the future PPP concessionaires issued last December, the EoI document said.
The container traffic at the VOC port has increased to 7.81 lakh TEUs in 2020-21 from 6.92 lakh TEUs in 2018-19. The recent traffic forecast study done by consultants shows that the future traffic growth at the port will depend heavily on container traffic. This necessitates the development of an outer harbour.
The two existing container terminals — PSA Sical and Dakshin Bharat Gateway — can accommodate vessels up to 320 m in length with a draft restriction of 11.7 m. Berth 8 can accommodate vessels up to 310 m with a draught of 14.2 m. This can handle container ships of less than 5,000 TEUs.
However, with the size of the container ships increasing globally, there is a need to substantially increase the infrastructure to handle 22,000 TEU vessels which need a draught of around 20 m, said an industry source.
‘Will offer better facilities’
Joe Villavarayar, Head of the Tuticorin Port Transport and Equipment Owners Association, said, “Thoothukudi is ideally located on the southern tip of the East-West shipping corridor.” With Sri Lanka facing a lot of uncertainties affecting the operations at Colombo port and Vizhinjam not being an all-weather port and having only 20 m draughts, the outer harbour project can offer better facilities than the two with bigger infrastructure, he said.
“By not developing the port long back, we lost all the cargo to Colombo port and also the country lost valuable forex as most of the Indian cargo from southern India is being transshipped at the Colombo port,” he said. “The all-weather outer harbour implementation into the sea should be taken up at a fast pace. We have a high potential.” “The outer harbour project should provide better infrastructure than both Colombo and Vizhinjam ports. That’s when we can be an alternative to dominate the region,” said a port official.
