Kolkata Port Trust to set up new tea park

Kolkata: Kolkata Port Trust (KopT) is planning to set up of a tea park and has already initiated talks with the Tea Board in this regard.

Kolkata Port Trust has land at Panskura in East Midnapore and at Panchpara in Sankrail, Howrah which can be utilised for setting up the tea park.

"We have already held talks with the Tea Board and the tea fraternity and discussed our plans for the proposed tea park. We have 30 acres of land at Panskura and also at Panchpara where land can be utilised for the tea park," KoPT chairman Vinit Kumar said at an interactive session on "Future Perspectives of Operation and Growth of KoPT" organised by Bharat Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.

A senior official of KoPT said that the former will provide the land and some basic infrastructure and it will be the tea owners who will be developing the park.

In Siliguri, a tea park has already come up in which the Siliguri-Jalpaiguri Development Authority had provided the land that is around 59.5 acres. Kumar has already paid a visit to the park in Siliguri.

Kolkata Port Trust is also coming up with a barge terminal at Balagarh in Hooghly which is 85 km upstream from river Ganga with an estimated investment of Rs 300 crores.

The terminal will come up on 300 acres land and those containers going upwards will be loaded in Kolkata and then taken to Balagarh from where it will be dispatched.

The move will reduce congestion in the KoPT. "The Detailed Project Report (DPR) is being prepared and we are hopeful of going for bidding in September this year," Kumar said.

He maintained that KoPT was growing at nine per cent, and has been the second highest growing port in the country out of the 12 major ports.

"Last year, the port handled 58 million tonne of cargo. So far, already 62 million tonne have been handled so far. Roughly, another one million tonne will be handled in the full fiscal," he added.

Kumar further said that the port is gearing up to cater to growing demand in the steel industry and also tapping the scope for handling LPG and LNG cargo by setting up additional berths.