Mundra Port

Mundra Port is India’s largest private port. Mundra is located in the Kutch district of the state of Gujarat, on the north shores of the Gulf of Kutch about 50 kilometers south of Anjar. The port is a unit of Adani Enterprises, which also controls Adani Power Ltd., a power producer with expansion plans. Mundra Port has a capacity of 50 million tons a year, and said it plans to handle 200 million tons of cargo a year by 2020.

Mundra Port Coal Terminal is the world's biggest coal importing terminal, with handling capacity of 40 million tonnes of coal annually. Adani is expanding to bring in coal from its mines in Indonesia and Australia.

History
The Port of Mundra is also a special economic zone. Incorporated in 1998 as Gujarat Adani Port Limited (GAPL), the company began operating in 2001. The Mundra Special Economic Zone was incorporated in 2003 and was merged with GAPL in 2006. The combined company was renamed "Mundra Port and Special Economic Zone Limited" and is India’s first multi-product port-based special economic zone (SEZ). Mundra port plans to develop a coal-import terminal at Vishakhapatnam in southern India.

According to the New York Times, billionaire Gautam Adani of Adani Enterprises spent a decade assembling tracts of land into a special economic zone and transformed Mundra into India’s biggest private port. Adani then used the port for a coal "global expansion." He acquired mining rights in Indonesia, bought two cargo ships (with two more on order as of July 2011), and bought a coal mine and Abbot Point port in Australia.

Coal plant
The Mundra Thermal Power Project was conceived for the captive consumption of the Mundra Port. Adani Power wants the plant at Mundra to be 4620 MW, consisting of 4 units of 330 MW and 5 units of 660 MW.

Mundra buys Australia coal mines and Abbot Point Terminal
In May 2011, Mundra Port & Special Economic Zone Ltd. (owned by Adani Enterprises) secured a $2 billion deal to lease Australia's Abbot Point Coal Terminal for 99 years, more than doubling Mundra Port's overall cargo-handling capacity. The deal will enable Adani Enterprises to transport coal from Australia to India. The Abbot Point Coal Terminal, a coal-export facility which is expanding its capacity to 50 million tons a year in 2011, is located in northern Queensland, close to Adani's coal mines in the Galilee basin.

The expansion may cost as much as A$600 million ($653 million) and take about three years. In 2009-10, about 17 million tons of coal was transported through Abbot Point. The Mundra deal could eventually make Abbot Point the largest coal port in the world, handling as much as 300 million tons to 400 million tons a year.

The Adani Group also bought Linc Energy Ltd.'s coal mines for $2.7 billion in 2010 and plans to invest A$6.9 billion ($7.5 billion) to develop the Galilee basin coal mines and related infrastructure in Queensland state. More than half of India's power-generation capacity of 173.6 gigawatts is based on thermal coal, and the country aims to add 163 GW capacity through March 2017. But the country's demand for coal is outstripping its domestic reserves, so companies are seeking to import coal or acquire coal mines overseas.

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