Archana Shukla

Mumbai: Lanco Infratech Ltd said on Wednesday that its consortium with Malaysia’s Pembinan Redzai won the bid for development of the Rs 8,000 crore Vizhinjam International Container Transhipment Port in Kerala. Lanco will develop the port and Pembinan Redzai will operate it.

The bid, floated by the government of Kerala (GoK) in August 2007 through Vizhinjam International Seaport Ltd, is on a 33-year concession basis.

To be developed in four phases, the port will have a total capacity of 6.5 million twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs). In the first phase, a capacity of 1.5 million TEUs would be built in the next five years at an investment of Rs 2,400 crore.

Traffic growth would determine the capacity expansion in the subsequent phases.

The consortium will use a 3:1 mix of debt and equity to fund development. A special purpose vehicle would be formed for the project, in which the Kerala government would hold a 24% stake.

The port, which boasts of a natural 15-metre draft that can accommodate large ships, will serve as a transhipment hub for India’s west coast.

Currently, traffic coming from western countries is transhipped at Colombo port in Sri Lanka and at Salalah port in Oman.

Some sections of the industry feel that proximity to these ports could affect the growth of the Vizhinjam port. But the consortium expects a change in the cargo situation and, in turn, in the growth in traffic.

Lanco Infratech’s director (infrastructure) Sanjay Joshi said the company has studied the movement of traffic in this region. “We are expecting some transhipment traffic to shift from Colombo and Salalah to Vizhinjam,” he said.

Initial discussions with major shipping lines have begun and the consortium is eyeing a share in the export import traffic too. The site connects to Europe, Persian Gulf, and the Far East and is expected to benefit Indian companies engaged in export and import as it would save foreign exchange outgo, time, costs and other transhipment risks, a release said.

Others bidders for the project’s development were Nagarjuna Constructions-Maytas-OPM Singapore, Videocon Industries-Gammon Infra-SICAL Logistics,Apollo Enterprise-DS Constructions and Zoom Developers-Portia Management Services.

Source : DNA