Paradip Port to have iron ore terminal

New Delhi, July 1 (ANI): An agreement has been signed between Paradip Port Trust and Blue Water Iron Ore Terminal Pvt. Ltd for construction of a deep draught iron ore terminal.

K. Raghuramaiah, Chairman, Paradip Port Trust signed the concession agreement on behalf of the Port and Harindar Pal Singh Banga, Vice-Chairman, Nobel Group signed on behalf of Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) here today.

Union Cabinet Minister of Shipping G.K. Vasan and other senior officers including Secretary (Shipping) A.P.V.N. Sarma, Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor and Joint Secretary (Ports) were present on the occasion.

Under the agreement, the iron ore terminal will be developed by the concessionaire at an estimated cost of Rs. 506.30 crores.

Paradip Port will provide supporting facilities like dredging of channel and berth, railway lines and back-up area at an estimated cost of Rs. 85.05 crores.

Besides this, the Port will also incur an expenditure of Rs. 20 crores towards shifting of the CISF complex and Rs. 15 crores towards upgradation of electrical reception facilities in order to facilitate implementation of the project.

On completion of the iron ore terminal, capacity addition to the Port will be ten MTPA. Since the dredging of the channel is in progress and the depths at the proposed channel and berth will be 17.1meters, it will facilitate handling of cape size vessels upto 1, 25, 000 DWT.

The concessionaire, Blue Water Iron Ore Terminal Pvt. Ltd. have offered a revenue share of 36.802 per cent to the port during the concession period of 30 years.

The concessionaire will complete the construction of the project facilities within 36 months from the date of award of concession.

This is the first project under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) to be implemented in the port sector as per the new Model Concession Agreement approved by the Cabinet and the tariff has been fixed up front by the TAMP.

As part of the PPP scheme of Government of India, Paradip Port Trust floated global tenders for construction of deep draught Iron ore berth on BOT basis.

Five bidders were short listed including the successful bidder, the consortium of Noble Group Ltd., Gammon Infrastructure Projects Ltd. and MMTC for this port sector BOT project.

The consortium has formed a SPV, Blue Water Iron Ore Terminal Pvt. Ltd. under the companies act to implement the project. (ANI)