Mr. Rajiv Agarwal, Managing Director of Essar Ports, has said that its hands are full with expansion projects at its ports and is not looking for further expansion into new ones. “At the moment, we are not looking for expansion into new ports abroad or in India. We have enough on our plate,” he added.The company has an aggregate capacity of 88 MMTPA across two facilities located at Vadinar and Hazira in Gujarat. It expects to scale the capacity to 158 MMTPA with expansion projects at these two facilities, a new port at Salaya in Gujarat and two terminals at Paradip in Orissa. The company is also awaiting the results of its bid for a Rs. 4,000-crore container terminal project in Chennai, after the project received the green signal from the Union Home Ministry.
Mr. Agarwal stated that the company has invested Rs. 520 crores on the iron ore terminal at Paradip, for which it has bagged a 30-year concession BOT order in 2009 from the Paradip Port Trust.
The company had a debt of Rs. 5,601 crores as on Sept. 30. “Regarding refinancing of debt, we will keep exploring. At the moment, we don’t have anything on the cards,” he said, adding that the company would be relieved if the interest rates come down. The current average interest rate for the company is 12-13%. In October, the company’s CFO had said it had approached the RBI to allow it as a special case to raise around Rs. 1,500 crores through external commercial borrowing to part refinance its debt.
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