Vizhinjam Port plans ₹10,000-crore outlay on expansion starting September

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : The Adani Group-run Vizhinjam International Deepwater Multipurpose Seaport, the country’s first dedicated container trans-shipment port, has achieved full capacity utilisation of 1.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) handling over a lakh container a month, in its first year of operations. There is now an urgency to expand the infrastructure with an investment around ₹10,000 crore planned, a company spokesperson said.

“We never expected to reach 8.5 lakh TEUs in 10 months. We thought it would be half of it. But, looking at the success of phase one, why wait till 2045 for the second phase. We are advancing the next phase of expansion so that the extended terminal will be ready by 2028,” the spokesperson added.

In May 2024, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi inaugurated the terminal. In July, the first ship berthed at the 800 m container terminal for trials and commercial operations started only in December. In the last one year, the terminal handled over 380 container ships, including MSC Irina, the world’s largest container ship, in June this year, he said.