Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) is planning to make an investment of Rs 53,000 crore to ramp up the capacity of Kattupalli port located in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvallur district to 320 million tonnes.
The current capacity of the port can handle 24.65 million tonnes of cargo. The Kattupalli port currently has approval for constructing five berths with a total quay length of 1,900 mtr. Of this, two berths are operational while the third is under construction. APSEZ plans to build 9,567 more of additional quay length beside another 1,250 mtr of quay for barge berths and 12 port craft facilities in phases.
It has filed a revised master plan with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) to begin the approval process. The total quay length of berth proposed as a part of the revised master plan development will be 11,467 meters in addition to 1,250-meter long barge berths and two single point moorings or SPMs.
The expansion will help APSEZ transform into a multi-commodity port for handling cargo such as liquid, bulk, break-bulk, project cargo, dry cargo, general cargo, containers, ro-ro, automobile and other non-hazardous cargoes such as liquid, gas and cryogenic cargo. Depending on the business requirements,
LNG will also be handled through FSRU and LPG will be handed through FSO, in addition to the land-based terminal, according to the revised master plan development. APSEZ also plans to develop port back-up industries and industrial development area and its associated infrastructure, based on business requirement.
The revised master plan development of Kattupalli port will be carried out in the total area of 2,472.85 ha which includes 133.50 ha of the existing area, 761.8 ha of government land, 781.4 ha of private land and proposed sea reclamation of 796.15 ha.
The planned expansion will also make Kattupalli India’s deepest port with an average berth depth of as much as 25 mtr. Apart from the existing breakwater, two new breakwaters of about total 12.10 km length are proposed, of which the new Northern breakwaters will be about 9.02 km and 1.22 km and the new Southern breakwater will be about 1.86 km.
For easy evacuation of cargo, a new rail, road and utility corridor is also proposed within the existing port boundary. This rail line will connect Kattupalli port with nearby southern rail link at Ennore Railyard and proposed Northern Rail Link at L&T spur location. When fully operational, Kattupalli will provide direct employment to about 1,500 persons, and indirect employment for 4,500 people.
