DPCL achieves financial closure for dev of Dhamra Port

Bhubaneswar, Feb 28 (UNI) The Dhamra Port Company Limited (DPCL), a 50:50 joint venture company of Larsen&Toubro Limited and Tata Steel Limited, has achieved financial closure for development of an all-weather deep port on the mouth of river Dhamra in Orissa.

The Company has signed the loan agreement yesterday with a consortium of lenders led by the Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI) who have agreed to part finance the project costing Rs.

24.6 billion.

Located between the main land and the Kanika Island on the eastern coast, Dhamra Port will be the deepest all-weather port of its kind in India with a draught of 18.5 meters to accommodate super cape-size vessels up to 180,000 DWT.

DPCL sources said the port when commissioned would be a boon to the mineral hinterland of north Orissa, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh where a large number of steel plants and mineral based industries are located and many more on the anvil.

The cargo of mineral and mineral based industries being highly freight sensitive, a deep draught port will be of great advantage as such cargo could move in larger vessels leading to lower incidence of sea freight on the landed cost.

The highly mechanized and advance material handling facilities planned at the port will offer the users loading and discharge rates comparable to the best in the world.

The port project included a 62-km rail connectivity to the main Howrah-Chennai line at Bhadrak.It will have 13 berths to handle over 83 million tons of cargo per year. Of these the first two berths with a handling capacity of up to 25 million tons of bulk cargo per annum will come up in the first phase.

When fully developed, the port will handle all types of cargo such as dry bulk, break bulk, liquid and container cargo.

UNI