The last day for furnishing bids for the Vizhinjam international port and transhipment terminal near here saw no response in what was a keenly awaited closure for the Rs 4,089-crore project.
Vizhinam International Seaport Ltd, the special purpose vehicle, has since extended the date of submission of bids by another month.
Three leading port operators out of the original five, which had evinced interest in the project, had procured request for proposal documents. But none turned in a bid at the end of the scheduled time at 11 am this morning.
The five companies are Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, Essar Ports, Gammon Infrastructure Projects, a consortium of Srei Infrastructure Finance and Obrascon Huarte Lain SA, and a joint venture of Concast Infratech and Hyundai Engineering and Construction.
Of these, Adani Ports, Essar Ports and Srei Infrastructure in league with its Spanish partner had purchased the RFP documents.
Vizhinjam is sought to be developed as a container transshipment terminal with a capacity to load six lakh twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) a year initially.
This can be scaled up to one million TEUs. The project will have a contract period of 40 years which can be extended by another 20 years.