Dhamra Port project work to start by Jan

The Dhamra Port Project, promoted jointly by Tata steel and L & T in Orissa, will go for financial closure by December this year. The work on the project is scheduled to start around of middle of January.

This was disclosed by B Muthuraman, the Tata Steel managing director on Thursday. Tata Steel and L & T had formed a 50 : 50 joint venture in October 2004 for setting up a greenfield port at Dhamra in Bhadrak district on the eastern coast.

The project, to be executed in two phases, will initially have a capacity of 12 to 15 million tonne per annum for bulk cargo such as coking coal, coal and iron ore. The first phase is estimated to cost about Rs 2000 crore out of which, the equity portion will be Rs 330 crore.

The port will be equipped with state-of-the-art facilities for mechanised loading and unloading systems, capable of handling modern high capacity cape size vessels. The handling capacity is expected to be increased to 25 million tonne per annum in the second phase.

In addition, development of a clean cargo berth to handle finished steel and intermediaries is also proposed.

"The master plan of the port envisages building of 13 berths over a period of 10 years, which will take the total port capacity to 80 million tonne and make it one of the largest ports in this part of the world" Muthuraman said.

The first phase will see development of 700 mtr quay line, to handle very large bulk carriers with a capacity of 1,80,000 deadweight tonnage (dwt).

He said, fining cargo for the port will not be a problem as bulk of the import of coking coal and export of steel by Tata Steel's existing facility at Jamshedpur will be routed through Dhamra.

Besides, it will also function as a captive port for the proposed six million tonne Tata's steel venture at Kalinga Nagar in the Jajpur district of Orissa. Muthuram said, the state government has already handed over 700 acre of land at the port area for construction and land acquisition process for the 65 km railway corridor linking the port, with the broad gauge line at Bhadrak is proceeding at a fast pace.

On the protests by green leaders that the port will hamper the nesting of Olive Ridley turtles on the Orissa coast, Muthuraman said, necessary steps will be taken to safeguard the environment and protect the nesting turtles.

Meanwhile, Dubai Aluminium Company Ltd (Dubal), which has entered into a joint venture with L&T to set up a Rs 15,000 crore alumina refinery and smelter plant in Orissa, is eyeing the Kutrumali and Sijimali bauxite deposits in southern part of the state for the project.

These two mines together contain about 256 million tonnes of bauxite. L&T, which had earlier proposed to set up a one million tonne alumina refinery in mid-90s, had been given the prospecting licence for these two mines by the then government.