Traders from in and around Chennai city and Tamil Nadu will have a new container terminal either to export or import goods starting December as Kamarajar Port facility begins operations. This will be in addition to the existing two container terminals at Chennai Port and one at L&T Kattupalli Port.
“As on date, 95 per cent of infrastructure work has been completed,” said an official of Adani Ports, which is constructing the terminal. “Work relating to small accessories and installation of entry and exit gates, parking yard and railway platform terminal is going on. These are expected to be completed within a month. However, operations will commence after December.”
Chennai Port has two terminals which can handle 2.8 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers per annum and one terminal at Kattupalli Port about 1.2 million TEUs. Currently, all the three terminals handle about two million TEUs per annum.
Adani Ports is building the new terminal at Kamarajar Port with an initial capacity of 0.8 million tonnes. With the entry of Kamarajar Port, the total capacity will increase to 4.8 million TEUs immediately and then to 5.6 million TEUs.
In the first phase, Rs.700 crore has been invested and second phase will involve expanding the terminal with additional investment of Rs.570 crore to handle another 0.6 million TEUs.
M.A. Bhaskarachar, Kamarajar Port Chairman cum Managing Director said the commencement of the terminal would be a big game changer as it would transform our port into into a multi-cargo port. Right now, Kamarajar Port handles mainly coal, liquid cargo and automobiles. Container terminal was the missing link.
Incidentally, Adani Ports will be manning both Kattupalli and Kamarajar ports with a combined total capacity of 2.6 million TEUs. Adani’s took over the operations of Kattupalli Port last April. Since, then there has been a substantial increase in the number of containers. For the last six months, they have been handling on an average about 3,000 containers per month.
According to sources, Adani’s Kamarajar Container Terminal has missed a couple of deadline since June 2016. However, the group’s website says it would be operational by October 2016.
