THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Vizhinjam International Seaport in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, has reached a significant milestone with the completion of the 3,100-metre-long breakwater.
Breakwaters are primarily constructed to shelter vessels and are typically built in water depths that vary from 10 to 25 metres.
Ports Minister V N Vasavan said that the inaugural trial run of port operations, encompassing activities such as container loading and unloading, is scheduled to commence by the second week of June. Following this, the port will be ready for a commercial launch by Onam, symbolically gifting the state.
The minister made this announcement after inspecting the breakwater site and other works, such as cranes supplied by Chinese-based Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Company Limited.
Of the 32 cranes ordered, 21 cranes, including eight rail-mounted quay cranes and 24 rail-mounted gantry cranes, have been delivered by the company, he said.
Two more ships carrying the remaining cranes are on the way to Vizhinjam. The installation and trial run of the 15 already arrived cranes have been successfully completed, the minister said.
The Adani Group, which has been entrusted with the responsibility to construct the port, is assured of extending all technical support and requisite expertise for the trial run, he added.
Vizhinjam Port offers large-scale automation for quick turnaround of vessels with state-of-the-art infrastructure to handle megamax containerships. Its capacity in phase 1 is to be one million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), and in subsequent phases, another 6.2 million TEUs will be added.
About Vizhinjam International Seaport:
- The Vizhinjam International Transhipment Deepwater Multipurpose Seaport is an ambitious project taken up by the Government of Kerala.
- It is primarily designed to serve container transhipment needs, in addition to handling multi-purpose and break bulk cargo.
- Vizhinjam International Port, about 11 nautical miles away from the international shipping channel, is considered India’s first international deep-water transhipment port.
- The port is being developed as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) project on a design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT basis.
- The port is being developed as a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) structure on a design, build, finance, operate, and transfer (DBFOT) basis. The PPP structure is based on a landlord model where land will be owned by the Government of Kerala (GoK) through Vizhinjam International Seaports Limited (VISL), a special purpose vehicle set up to manage the port development. The concessionnaire (Adani) will manage the entire port, including the civil infrastructure and suprastructure (terminal), and provide cargo handling services to the port users. 30 per cent of the land will be used for real estate development in the form of hotels, commercial buildings, and residential apartments. The port assets will be transferred back to GoK at the end of the concession period of 40 years (2015–2024). But interestingly, the funding for some civil infrastructure works (breakwater and fishing harbour) will be borne by GoK.
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