The Hindu Business Line : Kandla box terminal project set to take off

AFTER facing a delay of more than three and a half years, the Rs 200-crore container terminal project at Kandla port finally looks set to take off, with the port authorities likely to select the successful bidder within a week.

Informed sources say that the port would open the final price bids submitted by three bidders by the end of this week and finalise the successful bid on the basis of the revenue share offered to the port.

After the disqualification of L&T by the port in August last year, there are only three bidders in the fray — ABG Heavy Industries, Gammon India and Afcons.

The port had tried to hasten the bidding process in August last year, rescheduling the deadline for the submission of technical and financial bids to September 19.

But the pre-bid meetings between the port and the bidders got bogged down in a fresh delay.

Earlier, P&O Ports, which operates the Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal and the Chennai Container Terminal, had been the first to show interest in the project. But prolonged negotiations between P&O Ports and Kandla port over alterations in the concession agreement had come a cropper, leading to the withdrawal of the container terminal operator from the project.

Kandla port has proposed to realign the container terminal project and to have it constructed and operated on a build-operate-transfer basis on berths no. 11 and 12, which have a combined quay length of 545 m and a draft of 12.5 m.

The berth no. 12, which is at present being developed, is expected to be ready for use by October-end.

As per the fresh plan drawn up by Kandla port, the selected bidder will be required to commission full-fledged container-handling operations at berth no. 12 (with at least two new rail mounted quay cranes/ RMQCs) within 24 months of the signing of the lease agreement.

However, the selected party will have to commence container-handling operations at berth no. 11, which is ready for use, within eight months of the signing of the agreement with an adequate number of RMQCs and mobile harbour cranes.

Kandla port has projected a throughput of 1.5 lakh twenty-equivalent foot units (TEUs) in the first year and 4.50 lakh TEUs in the fifth year of operation for the terminal.

The port's cardinal marketing plank for the box terminal project is that it had over one million sq. km of hinterland, consisting of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Gujarat and parts of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

Kandla port is claiming that it is the `gateway port' for the vast granaries of Punjab and Haryana and the rich industrial belt of West and North India, catering to a variety of cargoes in the form of bulk, break-bulk, petroleum, oil and lubricants, and containers.

The other point being highlighted is that it is the nearest Indian port to West Asiaand Europe, offering "the lowest tariffs for cargo handling."

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