First vessel at Jawaharlal Nehru Port’s fourth container terminal – Bharat Mumbai Container Terminal (BMCT) will arrive on Friday and a formal inauguration ceremony is likely during second half of February.
On Monday, BMCT received its first container arriving by road during a gate opening ceremony.
“This container will be loaded on CMA-CGM’s vessel ‘Centaurus’ which arrives at BMCT on Friday 2 February 2018. With eight in-gates and eight out-gates, paperless transactions, weighbridge and radiation detection facilities, BMCT’s Phase 1 gate complex brings new levels of sophistication and efficiency to the Nhava Sheva area,” read their announcement statement on the first container arriving at the terminal.
The first container arriving by road will be followed by containers arriving by rail and barge.
On the occasion, BMCT’s Chief Executive Officer Suresh Amirapu said, “We have received immense help from the Customs Department and many other agencies to get to this point. We are honoured to welcome the first container together with Customs before our first vessel call later this week. These are exciting times ahead for the trade as BMCT introduces game-changing capacity and facilities into the market.”
With the inauguration in February, the first phase of the two phases of this container terminal project will be ready. Under the first phase 1,000 metres long quay, approach trestles, reclamation (90 Hectares), container stack yard, internal roads, parking area, adequate buildings and workshops, adequate container handling equipments, utilities including IT systems, etc, is included. The scope of work for the second phase-II involves another 1,000 metres long quay and similar facilities.
The estimated project cost is Rs 7,915 crore with capacity addition by both the phases being 4.8 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs). TEU is a term used to measure a ship’s as well as port’s cargo capacity. One TEU’s dimension is that of 20 feet long shipping container.
