PSA Singapore to develop JNPT’s fourth terminal

PSA Singapore on Tuesday signed an agreement with Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) to develop its fourth container terminal, involving an investment of Rs8,000 crore, in perhaps the single largest project in India's port sector.

The project involves developing a fourth container terminal with a quay length of 2,000 metres and capacity of 4.8 million twenty-foot-equivalent-units (TEUs), at an estimated cost of Rs7,915 crore.

The project, scheduled to be completed in six years in two phases, will raise JNPT's capacity to handle container traffic to 10 million TEUs by 2018-19.

JNPT is the biggest container port in India, handling 56 per cent of the country's containerised cargo and is currently ranked 31st among the top 100 container ports in the world.

With this capacity addition, JN Port will be able to handle 10 million TEUs, enabling it to be ranked among the top 10 global container ports.

Bharat Mumbai Container Terminals Private Limited (BMCT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of PSA Bharat Investments Pte Ltd (which is a subsidiary of PSA International), signed the concession with JNPT to develop the terminal on a design, build, operate, finance and transfer basis.

''Located at India's largest and premier container gateway port, BMCT will have berths with a depth of 16.5 metres, the deepest in JN Port. BMCT will be equipped with the latest technology and equipment to serve important industrial and manufacturing centres and cities in India's largest hinterland,'' PSA Singapore said in a release.

The concession is for a period of 30 years, at the end of which PSA has to transfer the project back to the government.

PSA has to submit a bank guarantee of Rs375 crore for the project.

PSA bagged the project earlier this year by offering to share 35.9 per cent of revenue.

This is the second time PSA has bid for the project. A few years ago, PSA had offered a much higher revenue share of 50.08 per cent to develop and operate the terminal, but had subsequently backed out from signing the concession agreement.

PSA has to start developing the first phase two-million-tonne a year capacity addition in three-and-a-half years or at the most in five-and-a-half years.

The second phase capacity expansion will kick off either after two years or within six months of the developer handling one million tonnes of throughput, whichever is earlier.