Adani Ports and Special Economic Zones (APSEZ), the country’s largest, private, port and logistics company and key subsidiary of the diversified Adani Group, has received a Letter of Intent (LoI) from the Ministry of Ports and Shipping of Sri Lanka and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) for development and operation of the West Container Terminal (WCT) in Sri Lankan capital Colombo.

APSEZ will partner with John Keells Holdings, Sri Lanka’s largest, diversified conglomerate, and the SLPA as a part of the consortium that has been awarded the mandate. The WCT will be developed on a build-operate-and-transfer (BOT) basis for 35 years in the public-private partnership (PPP) mode. WCT will have a quay of 1,400 metres long and 20 metres deep, making it a prime transshipment cargo destination to handle ultra-large container carriers.

The project is expected to boost WCT’s container-handling capacity and further consolidate Sri Lanka’s locational advantage as one of the world’s top, strategic nodes along the busiest global transshipment route. The Colombo Port is already the most preferred regional hub for transshipment of Indian containers and mainline ship operators with 45 per cent of Colombo’s transshipment volumes either originating from or destined to an Adani port terminal in India.

The network impact of this partnership is significant and expected to be mutually beneficial to both APSEZ and WCT from a string of seven container terminals across the 12 ports that Adani operates along the Indian coastline, handling an annual volume of over 6 million TEUs.

Speaking about the partnership, Karan Adani, the CEO and Whole-Time Director of APSEZ, has said: “Any port partnership is a validation of the mutual trust between the two nations, and in this context, the WCT partnership is significant on several fronts. It is a continuation of the deep and mutually-beneficial strategic relationship between the two neighbouring nations whose history is deeply intertwined.”