Paradip Port Trust today inked a concession agreement for construction of deep draught Iron ore berth on BOT basis that would enable it to handle cape size vessels upto 1,25,000 deadweight tonnage(DWT).

A concession agreement between Paradip Port Trust and Blue Water Iron Ore Terminal Pvt Ltd, a special purpose vehicle of Noble Group Ltd, Gammon Infrastructure Projects Ltd & MMTC was signed today for construction of a deep draught iron ore terminal in the presence of Union shipping minister G K Vasan.

The consortium which formed the special purpose vehicle was chosen for executing the project at an estimated cost of Rs 506.30 crore. Paradip Port will provide supporting facilities like dredging of channel and berth, railway lines and back-up area at an estimated cost of Rs.85.05 crore. Besides this, the port will also incur an expenditure of Rs 20 crore towards shifting of CISF complex and Rs 15 crore for upgrading electrical reception facilities in order to facilitate implementation of the project.

A PPT official said draught becomes an important factor in the choice of port by shipping lines which are deploying larger container vessels to achieve economies of scale. “The existing iron ore berth can handle panamax class iron ore carriers with a maximum parcel size of about 67,000 tonne due to draft restrictions. On completion of the Iron Ore Terminal, capacity addition to the PPT will be 10 million tonne per annum,” the PPT official said.