A consortium of Ripley & Co and Bothra Shipping has emerged as the highest bidder in a tender to operate a berth at Haldia Dock Complex (HDC) on design, build, finance, operate and transfer (DBFOT) basis for 30 years, entailing an initial investment of ₹600 crores.

The berth will have mobile harbour cranes, conveyor belt and wagon loading system, allowing faster movement of cargo from ship to rail.

The berth will primarily deal in imported dry bulk cargo such as coking coal, limestone and manganese ore, even as it would also have provisions for export cargo like iron ore.

Expected to be operational by the middle of 2026, the berth no 5 will be the second berth at Haldia to be end-to-end mechanised.

In 2022, HDC, which is part of the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port, Kolkata (formerly Kolkata Port Trust), had awarded berth no 2 to Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd for a similar project.

With the faster unloading of cargo, the handling capacity of the port is expected to increase, as this 254-meter long berth will be able to handle Panamax vessels.

The consortium, which also handles 15mt cargo at Paradip, is hoping to handle at least 5 million tonne cargo annually at the Haldia berth, if not more.

It agreed to pay ₹74.06 a tonne to SMPK compared with ₹73.26 a tonne floor price set by the port.

Even though three parties had qualified to bid, including Sajjan Jindal promoted JSW Infrastructure, they did not finally participate in the price bid, leaving the Ripley consortium and Odisha-based OSL in the fray.

The port is expected to ratify the bid at the meeting of trustees at the end of the month and the letter of intent (LoI) would be given after that.

At present, the berth is operated by Singapore-based Seapol, which was hurriedly brought in to fill up the vacuum created by the controversial exit of ABG Infralogistics in 2012.

Seapol operates mobile harbour cranes to unload cargo and then uses payloaders and dumpers to move the material to stockyard and wagon. The ports are now going for fully mechanised systems where a full rake of wagons can be loaded in two hours. Seapol’s contract ended in 2023 and the operator was on extension.