‘Monumental moment’: Vizhinjam port welcomes its first mothership

Before the 300-metre-long Marshall Island-flagged container ship berthed at the port Thursday morning, tug boats gave it a water salute. The ship, operated by Bernhard Schulte Ship Management, Singapore, was hired by Maersk (AP Moller Group). It arrived from the Xiamen port in China.

On Friday, the state government will hold an official reception for the ship, which will leave for Colombo after unloading around 1,900 containers.

“This event signifies a monumental moment in Kerala’s maritime history and stands as a testament to the unwavering commitment of the Left Democratic Front government to the state’s development… Vizhinjam Port will create over 5,000 direct job opportunities and significantly boost the industry, commerce, transportation, and tourism sectors,” Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said in a post on X.

The Rs 7,600-crore transhipment deepwater multipurpose seaport project in Vizhinjam is being executed by Adani Ports and SEZ Private Limited on a design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT) model.

The project has been the subject of debate for years, with successive governments looking at various ways of executing it. Eventually, in 2015, the then Congress government in Kerala inked a deal with Adani Group, under which the group would invest Rs 2,454 crore, and another Rs 1,635 crore would be mobilised from the state and Central governments as viability gap funding. The Kerala government also gave 500 acres of land. The DBFOT deal is for 40 years, with provisions extending for another 20 years.

Vizhinjam is the first international deepwater transhipment port in the Indian subcontinent, with a natural depth of more than 18 metres, scalable up to 20 metres, which is crucial to allow entry of large vessels and motherships.

The port is located 10 nautical miles for the international shipping route. Other advantages of the port are minimal littoral drift along the coast and virtually no requirement of any maintenance dredging. The port is expected to compete with Colombo, Singapore, and Dubai for trans-shipment traffic. It is expected to bring down the cost of movement of containers to and from foreign destinations.