AIP for port in India

The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, provided the AIP needed for setting up a port at Vadhavan near Dahanu in Maharashtra. With a natural draft of about 20m close to the shore, the port will enable call of container vessels of 16,000-25,000 teus capacity.

Vadhavan port will be developed with a ‘landlord model’. A Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) will be formed with Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) as the lead partner with equity participation equal to or more than 50% to implement the project.

The SPV will develop the port infrastructure including reclamation, construction of breakwater, besides establishing connectivity to the hinterland. All the business activities would be undertaken under PPP mode by private developers.

JNPT and Mundra, the two largest container handling ports of the country (for mid-size container ships only), have drafts of 15m and 16m respectively, while the world’s largest container handling modern deep draft ports require a draft of 18m-20m.

As well as fulfilling draft requirements, the port would also cater to the spill over traffic from JNPT port once its planned capacity of 10m teus is fully utilised.

Maharashtra has India’s largest container port at JNPT, which caters to the hinterland of Maharashtra, North Karnataka, Telangana and secondary hinterland of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, NCR, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.

The position of JN Port, the biggest container port in India is 28th in the world with a traffic of 5.1m teus. The completion of the fourth terminal at JN Port will enable capacity increase of up to 10m teus by 2023, making the port the 17 the largest container port in the world. Container traffic in the JNPT hinterland is expected to grow from 4.5 MTEUs currently to 10.1 MTEUs by 2022-25 when JNPT’s potential will be fully exhausted.

With the development of Vadhavan port, India is expected to break into the countries with top 10 container ports in the world.