Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited, the country’s largest port developer, on Thursday announced that it has reached a share purchase agreement with Larsen and Toubro Limited to acquire 97% stake in Marine Infrastructure Developers Private Limited, which operates the Kattupalli Port near Chennai.
The deal is worth Rs 1,950 crore, of which Adani will pay Rs 1,562 crore to settle the dues of Marine Infrastructure Developers while Rs 388 crore go towards acquiring its shares, The Hindu reported.
The port is located 30 kilometres north of Chennai and is connected to the hinterland in north Tamil Nadu, Chennai, Bangalore and southern Andhra Pradesh.
“Adani Ports is committed to make Kattupalli port one of the largest ports in southern India,” said the company’s Chief Executive Officer Karan Adani. “We are going to start our construction to diversify the cargo of the port and will be adding 40 million tonnes of new capacity in next three years.”
The company plans to transform Kattupalli into a multi-commodity port to handle cargoes such as containers, automobiles, break bulk, general cargo, liquid cargo and project cargo. At present, it has two berths with quay length of 710 metres, six quay cranes, 15 rubber tyred gantry cranes, and 5,120 ground slots with the capacity to handle 1.2 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers every year.
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