The Hindu Business Line : Ennore port plans container terminal

ENNORE Port Ltd (EPL), the country's first corporatised port, plans to construct a container terminal in the next 24 months at Ennore, located about 25 km north of Chennai.

To be built on a build, own and transfer (BOT) model, the cost of the project would be Rs 300 crore to Rs 400 crore, Mr M. Raman, Chairman and Managing Director, EPL, said.

In three to four months, the company will issue a request for qualification (RFQ) to select the container terminal's developer, and the project will be done through an open tender basis, he said.

P&O Ports, which runs the container terminal at Chennai port, may not be allowed to bid for the Ennore container terminal that would be leased out to a private firm for 30 years. A decision on this (to bar P&O Ports from bidding) will be taken and communicated while issuing the RFQ. The EPL will take a similar stand to that of Jawaharlal Nehru port, which disallowed P&O Ports to bid for another terminal in the port. "We want to avoid a complete monopoly by a private operator," he said.

The Ennore container terminal, which will have two berths, will provide an alternative infrastructure to the trade, which is now stuck with the private run container terminal in the Chennai port operated by Chennai Container Terminal Ltd of P&O Ports, he said on the sidelines of a seminar organised by Capexil that discussed problems at the Chennai container terminal.

According to Mr Raman, the terminal at Ennore will be able to handle about 6 million TEUs (twenty foot equivalent units) a year. The depth in the terminal would be 15 metres to handle container vessels up to 8,000 TEUs capacity, he said.

Mr Raman said that the terminal at Ennore will not take away container traffic from Chennai. The market for container handling in the country will quadruple in the next ten years to about 16 million TEUs, he said. Trade in northern India would also divert their cargo to Ennore, he said.