SCI to order 42 new vessels

Shipping Corporation of India(SCI), that currently had reserves worth Rs 20,000 crore, was looking at ordering 42 new vessels for $5billion by the end of 2010, that would take up its tonnage to 10 million deadweight tonnage(DWT) from 5 million DWT now.

We will place orders for four new vessels in the first week of August this year, said S Hajara, chairman and managing director of SCI here at the sidelines of a Confederation of Industries(CII) Logistics Meet. Of the four, three will be container ships of 4400 TEU each and one very large crude carrier (vlcc) of 31900 tonne.

After a hiatus of a decade between 1995 to 2005, when SCI could barely order ten vessels in all, it took up the task of fleet acquisition from 2005 onwards and has already placed orders for 28 vessels for $1.6 billion till date. "The plan was to order 70 vessels between 2005 to 2010-11 fiscal", Hajara said.

This apart, the shipping company also looked at picking up participatory stakes in terminal management, railway transportation, inland container depot(ICD) & container freight terminal projects besides having stakes in shipyards.

"The debt-equity ratio of such infrastructure projects would be typically 70:30, and a nominal 25 per cent stake in the equity component would not be a huge amount. We can,thereby, participate in a number of joint ventures(JV).", Hajara said.

SCI had already formed a consortium with Mediterranean Shipping Company(MSC), Container Corporation of India(ConCor),Central Warehousing Corporation(CWC) to bid for the fourth container terminal at Jawaharlal Nehru Port and Ennore of 4 million TEUs each. As for the other projects, it looked at finalising some within a year's time.