One of India's largest private port companies, Essar Ports Limited (EPL), has announced that through its wholly owned subsidiary Vadinar Oil Terminal Limited it has won the contract for construction and operation of three iron ore berths, including two outer harbor berths and one inner harbor berth, at Visakhapatnam port on build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis for a concession period of 30 years. These three berths will have a combined capacity of 23 million mt per year.
According to Essar Ports' statement, this project will be a big boost to the third party cargo handling and revenue of EPL as it will handle 17 million mt per year of third party cargo and 6 million mt per year of Essar Steel cargo. With the commissioning of this project, EPL's total capacity for iron ore export on the east coast will reach 39 million mt per year with four highly mechanized iron ore berths, three in Visakhapatnam port and one in Paradip port.