Adanis Port To Be Operational By 1998

Indian trading house Adani Exports did over Rs 1,600 crore worth of business last year but has now set its sights on a new goal -- a massive state-of-the-art port it is building on the nation's west coast.

"We see a huge future for the port based on the type of response we have been getting from foreign companies," firm director Jatin Dalal said in an interview on Tuesday. "We have made up our minds it will be comparable to any international port."

By the year 2001, 25 million tonnes of traffic could flow through the port annually, Dalal quoted a study by consulting firm A F Ferguson as saying.

Company officials say that among the major players sniffing for a piece of the action at the new port are Marubeni, Caltex and Indian Oil Corp, India's largest oil refiner. "So far we haven't tied up firm plans with anyone," company chairman Gautam Adani said. "But we expect to make an announcement within the next three months or so."

Adani and the Gujarat state government are equal partners in the project to develop a port at Mundra, a coastal village close to Kandla port. Construction began last year and the port will become operational in the first quarter of 1998, Dalal said.

He did not say how large the port, located on terrain that is flat and sparsely-populated, would be. "But it has a unique advantage -- there is a deep draft of 15 metres, which means it can berth 60,000-dwt ships," Dalal added. "The draft increases to 22 metres about 2 kms away, where you could berth oil tankers of 300,000-tonne capacity."

No Indian port can handle such large vessels at present, he said. "The waterfront we can use for the construction of jetties is around 5 km long. We can spread open and closed storage facilities over an area of 300 acres. Our total backup area will be 2,000 acres."

India's manufacturers have worried over its crumbling infrastructure for some years now. Exporters say it has left them powerless to reap the full benefit of economic reform begun in 1991. Analysts say the bottlenecks may even choke further reform.

The government has estimated that investments to the tune of $150 billion will be required to revitalise the infrastructure sector over the next five years.

Adani said the firm had initially decided to set up its own port at Mundra, as a way of getting round the delays in loading and unloading the ships that dock at Indian ports.

"We found there were lots of opportunities but we could not convert them into results, because of delays and demurrage problems," finance director Rajesh Adani added. "We want to strengthen our trading activity and slowly also want to build up the asset base."

Rajesh estimated that the firm's turnover would grow at least 20 to 30 per cent over the first one or two years after the port was commissioned. "At Kandla or Bombay today, the output or loading rate is around 1,500 tonnes per day. At our port, it will be 7,000 to 8,000 tonnes daily."

Gautam Adani and company officials were unanimous that the company will cross the Rs 2000 billion-mark in sales turnover in the current financial year ending on March 31, 1998.

Adani Exports, headquartered in the western city of Ahmedabad, notched a turnover of Rs 16.05 billion in the financial year ended March 31, 1997.