The Hindu Business Line : JNPT rail, road linkages hold key — Gateway Terminals hopeful of partial rollout by March

The key to early start of terminal will be the speed at which JNPT goes about augmenting its road and rail linkages to ensure better container evacuation.

Mumbai , Nov. 28

GATEWAY Terminals India, the joint venture between AP Moller-Maersk Group and Container Corporation of India Ltd, is hoping to roll out part of its 1.3 million TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit) terminal by March 2006.

The scheduled commissioning of the Rs 1,050-crore facility is by August 2006.

The facility will become the fourth box terminal at JNPT (Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust).

However, the key to this early start will be the speed at which JNPT goes about augmenting its road and rail linkages to ensure better container evacuation.

Following the monsoons this year, NH-4B, recently built at a cost of Rs 177 crore, was thrown out of gear, leading to a traffic pile-up. While repairs of this road are on, the Rs 60-crore doubling of the rail line between the port and Panvel is to be completed by the middle of next year.

The other link road in progress is the SH-54 being built at Rs 130 crore with a May 2007 deadline.

Mr Kapil Rawat, Chief Executive Officer, Gateway Terminals India (GTI), told Business Line that the project was pretty much on schedule. "It will be a gradual scaling up of operations as GTI hopes to start off with 3,00,000-4,00,000 TEUs in the first year where we hope to get in about nine months. We are hopeful that the road linkages will be done in time so that we can get part of the terminal functional."

Meanwhile, the existing operators - Jawaharlal Nehru Port Container Terminal and Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal - are already going full steam, together having touched 2.4 million TEUs; once Gateway Terminals gets going next year, JNPT will have a combined volume of nearly three million TEUs.

When GTI reaches its rated capacity of 1.3 million TEUs, there will be container traffic of four million TEUs.

And the going can only get worse as JNPT is planning a fourth terminal with a total quay length of 2,000 metres, more than that of the first three put together.

According to Mr Rawat, many of the international shipping lines are holding back their plans as they feel there is no requisite capacity available in India to handle their vessels.

With a combined quay length of 1,992 metres, JNPT may not still figure high up in the priority of international shipping lines used to the likes of the 22-kilometre-long waterfront in Hong Kong.

Still, with four million TEUs at one single destination and a fourth terminal set to at least double capacity, surely JNPT is going places as a hub in-the-making.

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