Ennore Port was born as the 12th major port in India in Tamil Nadu, 20 km north of Chennai. The commercial operations of the port started on June 22, 2001 with two mechanised coal berths having a capacity of 12 million tonnes.
Initially, the port was developed for the purpose of receiving coal for the thermal power stations of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board on the consideration that the rail-cum-coastal shipping movement of coal would be economically cheaper. In fact, the project was christened the Ennore Coal Port Project. However, the intrinsic growth potential of Ennore Port, bestowed on it by its location in an industrially fertile hinterland and its proximity to the commercially booming metropolis of Chennai, held out greater promise– and Ennore Port became destined to bloom as a multi-cargo mega port.
In the wake of the Port Development Programme rolled out by the Ministry of Shipping, Road Transport & Highways, Department of Shipping, Government of India in the last decade, significant opportunities for growth were laid before Ennore Port. Therefore, Ennore Port Ltd had to gear itself up to the task of setting up new facilities and enhance its capacities to cater to varied import and export business such as industrial coal imports, iron ore exports, chemicals and liquid commodities, containers, etc. With the evolution of Chennai as the automobile manufacturing and export hub of India–comparable to Detroit–Ennore Port immediately seized the opportunity for further diversification and set up a Car Export cum Multipurpose Terminal to meet the export business of Renault Nissan Automotive India Pvt Ltd, which has a manufacturing unit in Oragadam, near Chennai with a production capacity of 4 lakh cars, a major share of which is for export.
The second stage development of Ennore Port, which was set in motion in 2006, mostly on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) footing, will bring additional an 51 million tonnes of cargo handling capacity.
An ambitious capital dredging project at an investment of `171 crore is under implementation to deepen the port channel to 20 mtrs and the basin to 18.5 mtrs and the iron ore berth area to 18 mtrs. This will facilitate handling of capesize vessels, which will be a significant achievement of Ennore Port within a short time of its operations.
In a conscious move, the Government of India set up Ennore Port as a Corporate Port to function as a Landlord Port so that it would be different and distinct from the other major ports. Ennore Port Ltd has been able to live up to the expectation of the Government by its continuous profit-making record since 2004-05. It attained the honour of becoming a ‘Mini Ratna’ Public Sector Undertaking in June 2009. EPL has been rated as ‘excellent’ consistently for its performance by the Department of Public Enterprises, Government of India since 2007-08.
It is a matter of great honour to EPL that it has been presented the MOU Excellence Certificate by the Prime Minister of India for excellence in the achievement of MOU targets. Ennore is the only major port that pays dividend to Government of India. The Dividend payment commenced from 2008-09 and the latest dividend was paid @20% on PAT for the financial year 2010-11.
During the financial year concluded on March 31, 2011, the port registered a total income of `168.11 crore and gross profit of `122.80 crore.
During the second stage development, an investment of `3,347 crore has been made since 2006. This includes private investment of `2,537 crore. The inherent potential of the port will propel it to launch the third stage development in the near future which will result in the port capacity touching 140 million tonnes per annum. Undoubtedly Ennore will emerge as a major container port with 7 million TEUs per annum capacity. The Ennore Port’s journey during its first 10 years has been spectacular.
It is now is well set on its march to realise the slogan “Ennore Port–India’s Port of the Millennium”.