New Chennai container terminal opens
A new major container terminal in India opened last week at the Port of Chennai, the country’s largest East Coast container gateway.
Operated by a joint venture between PSA International and domestic logistics company Sical, the terminal has a capacity of 1.5 million TEUs, doubling the port's capacity. The existing terminal, which handled 1.4 million TEUs in the last fiscal year, is operated by DP World.
The new Chennai terminal has draft deep enough to handle 8,000-TEU ships, something only one other port in India (and no ports under the jurisdiction of the national government) can offer. That could give Chennai a leg up on Mumbai, far and away the country’s busiest container port, but one that is restricted by draft issues that prevent calls from ships carrying more than 2,500 TEUs.
Chennai is set to grow further over the next 10 years once a major deepwater terminal is approved and built. The new terminal, to be built on reclaimed land, could handle up to 4 million TEUs, more than doubling capacity. Port officials envision the port eventually handling 10 million TEUs.
Chennai is capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu and is a key automobile manufacturing region as well as a container hub for the country's Southeast.