‘Centaurus’, a container ship owned by French line CMA CGM, will dock at Bharat Mumbai Container Terminals (BMCT) in Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), on Friday, marking the official opening of the biggest single-container terminal built in India with record-high foreign direct investment (FDI).

BMCT, a wholly owned unit of Singapore’s PSA International — one of the world’s top three container port operators — has signed up Swahili Express service or SWAX (India-West Asia-Africa trade lane) run by a consortium of CMA CGM and Emirates Shipping Line, as its first customer.

The service connecting JNPT with Jebel Ali, Khor al Fakkan, Mombasa, Dar es Salaam and Djibouti is run with five ships — four from CMA CGM and one from Emirates Shipping.

Increased capacity

The start of commercial operations of the first phase of the ₹7,915-crore, 4.8-million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) capacity terminal will help State-owned JNPT double its capacity from 4.8 million TEUs.

The project involves construction of two berths, of 1 km each, in two phases, with the first phase designed to handle 2.4 million TEUs at a cost of ₹4,719 crore. The second phase will add another 2.4 million TEUs involving an investment of ₹3,196 crore by 2022.

The equity investment of PSA, fully owned by Temasek Holdings, the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, in the terminal is about ₹3,000 crore, making it the biggest single FDI in an Indian port project.

PSA emerged the highest bidder for the 30-year contract by quoting the highest revenue share price bid of 35.79 per cent.

More slots

Container carriers say that the opening of the biggest facility and the fifth overall at JNPT will make available more berthing/window slots at India’s busiest container gateway.

“In today’s scenario, all the four existing terminals have back-to-back windows. Now, if a vessel is delayed by one or two hours, it will be out of the window slot or have to look at the possibility of cutting down move counts for loading/unloading containers to meet the sailing deadline. It may even have to wait for a berth for days together or pray that someone else’s window gets delayed,” said an executive at the India office of a top container line based in Europe.

This results in burning extra fuel and forces the lines to miss some port calls en-route to JNPT, he added.

The opening of the PSA terminal will also help stop the practice adopted by DP World (which runs two terminals at JNPT) and APM Terminals (one terminal at JNPT) of asking lines to call at their other ports/facilities on the western coast if they want a window at JNPT.

“So, whoever was going to Gateway Terminals India (GTI) (APM Terminals Mumbai) had to go to Pipavav where APM Terminals runs a port, while those calling at NSICT (Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal), had to go to Mundra where DP World operates a terminal. The windows were allotted on that basis as DP World and APM Terminals had a duoopoly and used it to promote both sides. That will not happen now because PSA does not have any other facility on India’s western coast to adopt this strategy. Carriers now have got options. It will make life a lot easier for shipping lines,” the executive said.

Besides, the turn-around time of some of the ships calling at JNPT will be much faster because the PSA terminal can accommodate mother ships given its deep draft, longer quay length and cranes for handling bigger ships that none of the existing four terminals at JNPT have, he added.

A mother ship can now directly call at JNPT, unload/load containers and sail off without having to call at other terminals on the western coast.

“This is one big change going to happen in cargo flow dynamics,” said an executive at a firm running a warehouse near JNPT.

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