Adani to buy L&T’s Kattupalli port

APSEZL has agreed to pick up a 97 per cent stake in Marine Infrastructure Developer Private Limited, which operates Kattupalli port, from Larsen & Toubro (L&T). The transaction has received the relevant government and regulatory approvals. With the acquisition, APSEZL plans to transform Kattupalli port into a multi-commodity port to handle cargo such as containers, automobiles, break bulk, general cargo, liquid cargo and project cargo. The company is planning to start construction to diversify the cargo handling capacity of the port and will be adding 40 million tonnes (mt) of new capacity in the next three years. Completed in January 2013, the original project entailed the construction of an integrated shipyard for the construction and repair of defence and commercial vessels and setting up of a minor port with a 1.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units annual capacity container terminal in Kattupalli in Tamil Nadu.