According to Adani Exports Ltd president (group HRD and corporate affairs) Saurabh Dixit, the first phase of the Rs 350 crore project's multi-purpose terminal is capable of berthing four vessels with a berthing capacity up to 60,000 dead weight tonnage (dwt). This jetty has 300 acres of back-up area and an approach road.

The first vessel that had arrived for berthing on October 7 was Alpha II carrying 4,250 mts of RBD palmolein oil imported by Adani Exports Ltd, the flagship of the group.

The project, originally named Adani Port Ltd, later became a joint venture with the Gujarat Port Infrastructure and Development Company Ltd in June 1998 and was renamed Gujarat Adani Port Ltd.

Dixit said that the port having the market potential of handling cargo to the tune of 27 lakh tonnes is likely to achieve a marketpotential of 9.24 crore tonnes of cargo handling by the year 2025.

At present, the company has already developed 27,000 sq mtrs of closed storage besides open storage and 1 lakh kl of tank storage as the first phase of the port development.

The company proposes to expand the project by laying a 54 km long railway line connecting Adipur to the port besides building a container terminal quay wall of 600 mts, dry bulk terminal quay wall of 500 mtrs, capital dredging, developing land for liquid bulk terminal, storage facilities for POL products and sharing services like marine facilities, power, water and other infrastructure facilities for the port development as part of its future expansion.

Dixit said that the Adani group, which had started as a partnership firm in 1988, was converted into a public limited company in 1993. It had attained the superstar trading house status in 1998 and had achieved a turnover of Rs 2,400 crore last year.

The group was the largest foreign exchange earner besides beingthe numero uno trading house in the country. Its main exports were textiles, coffee, marine products, sesame, castor oil, HPS groundnut, pepper, rice, wheat, deoiled cakes and pharmaceuticals.

The main imports of the company were plastics and polymers, coal and coke, chemicals, precious metals, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, petrochemicals, computer hardware and fertilisers. Its main markets are spread in countries in north America, Europe, Africa, West Asia, East Asia and the CIS.

Adani group entered into infrastructure development with the port project at Mundra. This was undertaken as the group found that most ports are congested in the country and pre-berthing delays for ships coming in was as high as 11 days.

The heavy congestion at ports for a berth caused waiting periods varying between four to 15 days resulting into heavy demurrage charges ranging between $4,000 and $12,500 per ship per day in addition to a loss of credibility due to delayed despatches of contracted goods, additional storagecharges at ports for stockpiling of cargo and additional handling charges for express loading of stockpiled cargo.

This issue led the group to set certain guiding principles before undertaking the development of the port. These included setting up a full-fledged port marketing department for optimising facilities and future expansion, zero demurrage, doing away with man power-related problems and a single widow system, Dixit said.

Gautam Adani, the head of the Adani group, envisions developing a power project and establishing an industrial park at Mundra in future.