Work on India's long-awaited mega deep-water port project at Vadhavan, some 120 miles north of Nhava Sheva Port (JNPA), is ready to take off.

The project was approved by the Indian government in 2020 for development under a public-private partnership (PPP) model at an estimated cost of about US$9 billion. A special purpose vehicle (SPV) formed between JNPA, with a 74% stake, and the Maharashtra Maritime Board, holding the remainder 26% ownership, has the mandate to build and operate the project.

Vadhavan has been conceived and designed as a satellite facility to Nhava Sheva as the latter had become saturated with little room for further capacity additions.

However, various mandatory approval delays stalled the new project’s progress.

The consortium has now received all approvals to kick off construction, according to JNPA.

“The application filed by JNPA for grant of permission to establish and develop a major port, that is Vadhavan Port, is granted and the applicant-JNPA is permitted to establish and develop Vadhavan Port at Vadhavan,” a statement said.

The statement added, “With JN Port set to exhaust its full capacity of 10 million TEUs after the ongoing projects are commissioned, and unable to be dredged further from the 15-metre draught, Vadhavan will be developed as a deep draught port to cater to large container, bulk and crude vessels.”

JNPA went on to explain, “The objective is to augment and develop a greenfield facility to handle the growing traffic demand of ports on the west coast.”

The potential of Vadhavan stems from two factors: the site has deep natural depth of 20 meters that can accommodate vessels of up to 25,000 TEU capacity and its access to a large hinterland market.

“A natural water depth of 20 metres is available at a distance of 10 km, and 15 metres contour is available at 6 km from the shore, which allows safe voyage and mooring for the new generation vessels,” it said.

“No capital dredging is required in the navigational channel and harbour area as draught of 18 metres is naturally available,” the statement added.

Vadhavan Port is expected to provide a capacity of 15 million TEUs in Phase I, going up to 24 million TEUs when fully build-out.

Nhava Sheva, featuring five box facilities, faces growing competition from Adani Group’s Mundra Port.

There has been a general view that a portion of Nhava Sheva’s anticipated trade growth could spill over to Mundra if adequate capacity is not created.

“The demand for container traffic will further accelerate after the plans for improving logistics infrastructure fructify and the 'Make-in-India' push drives greater exports and manufacture sourcing to India,” the government previously said, while approving the Vadhavan project.