Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) is set to acquire up to 70% in Krishnapatnam Port in a deal valued at more than Rs55bn ($770.58m).
APSEZ is part of the Indian conglomerate Adani Group. The corporation will purchase the stake from Krishnapatnam Port Company, which manages the deepwater port in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
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The proposed takeover will provide APSEZ access to the waterfront area of 12.5km, as well as a transit storage space of 6,800 acres.
The acquisition will also accelerate the process of achieving APSEZ’s goal to manage 400 metric tonnes (mt) of cargo by 2025.
APSEZ CEO Karan Adani said: “We are targeting 400mt of volumes by 2025. We are looking at close to Rs25bn crore of CapEx every year.
“This takes care of the 400mt, which I talked about, and does not include any acquisitions that we may be planning for. We are continuously on the lookout for stressed assets that are available at discounted rates.”
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By GlobalDataAt present, Krishnapatnam Port has a draft of 18.5m, which is suitable to manage a full-loaded Capesize vessel with a capacity of 200,000t.
In 2004, the CVR Group won a contract from the state government of Andhra Pradesh to develop and manage the Krishnapatnam Port for a period of 30 years. The contract has an option for a 20-year extension.
CVR Group formed Krishnapatnam Port Company to manage the Krishnapatnam Port, which commenced operations in 2008.
Currently, Krishnapatnam Port handles 40-45 million tonnes of cargo from ten berths, including a 1.2 million TEU-capacity container terminal.
It will be APSEZ’s third acquisition since 2014. It acquired Dhamra port and Kattupalli port in 2014 and 2016, respectively.
APSEZ manages ten ports and terminals, which include Mundra, Dahej, Kandla, and Hazira in Gujarat; Mormugao in Goa; Dhamra in Odisha; Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh; and Kattupalli and Ennore in Tamil Nadu.
Together, these ports and terminals can manage 395mt of cargo, which equates to 24% of the total port capacity in the country.
APSEZ is also developing a transshipment port at Vizhinjam in Kerala, along with a container terminal at Yangon, Myanmar.
In May, APSEZ unveiled plans to invest around Rs575.94bn ($8.31bn) to further expand the Mundra port capacity.
