Gateway Terminals India Pvt Ltd (GTI), 74 per cent owned by A P M Terminals Management BV, will replace ship-to-shore cranes or so-called quay cranes and rail mounted gantry cranes at its facility in Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority with an investment of $115 million to comply with the terms of the 30-year concession agreement it had signed with the state-run port.
State-run rail operator Container Corporation of India Ltd (Concor) holds 26 per cent stake in GTI, one of the five terminals operating at Jawaharlal Nehru Port located near Mumbai.
APM Terminals Management is the container port operating unit of Danish shipping and logistics giant A P Moller-Maersk A/S.
GTI has a berth length of 712 metres, 128 acres of yard space, and equipment including 10 twin-lifting quay cranes, 40 rubber-tire gantry cranes, and three rail-mounted quay cranes. The terminal started operations in March 2006 and is designed to handle 1.8 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) a year.
GTI is expected to deploy some of the 18 ship-to shore (STS) cranes and 9-yard cranes ordered by A P M Terminals at China’s port equipment manufacturer Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company Limited or ZPMC per an alliance memorandum of understanding signed by the two firms in October last year.
Centre’s restrictions
The Centre had placed restrictions in July 2020 on vendors and service providers in China for public procurement tenders.
The government’s move was aimed at strengthening defence and national security after skirmishes with China along the border. It is applicable to autonomous bodies, central public sector enterprises and public-private-partnership projects receiving financial support from the government or its undertakings.
Though GTI does not receive any financial support from the government or its undertakings, port sources said that installing ZPMC cranes could pose a bit of a problem for GTI given India’s continuing standoff with China.
Installing cranes of any other make, on the other hand, could be challenging to GTI which is configured to run with ZPMC cranes. The crane operations at the terminal are expected to suffer from lower productivity and complexities if non-ZPMC gear are to be deployed, sources said.