Royal Boskalis Westminster NV, a dredging company, is set to win the Jawaharlal Nehru (JN) port dredging contract, Livemint.com reports.
Royal Boskalis offered Rs.1,219.8 crore, the lowest bid, for the much-delayed work on the port channel. This information has been confirmed by N.N. Kumar, deputy chairman of JN port.
The approved budget for the dredging project was set on 1 March to Rs.1,571.6 crore.
The port is currently at a depth of 11.5m. It is able to handle container ships with up to 3,000 standard containers. The project will deepen the channel to 14m to enable ships with a capacity of loading 6,000 standard containers to berth.
Other bidders for the project are Jan De Nul NV; a consortium of Dredging International NV and Van Oord Dredging and Marine Contracting Co. NV; and South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co. Ltd.
The project is scheduled for completion by 2014, instead of the earlier estimate of 2010.
The Jawaharlal Nehru (JN) port loads more than half the container cargo passing through India’s ports. Over the past few years, India’s port container traffic has been expanding at an average 15% a year.
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Dredging Today Staff, June 19, 2012