Hyderabad: Krishnapatnam Port Company (KPCL) plans to build an industrial city in over 4,000 acres as part of its SEZ at Chillakur mandal in Nellore district, said a senior official of the company.
“We are planning to develop an industrial city near the port. It will have a pharma city spread over 1,000 acres, which will have common infrastructure required for pharma companies.” said Mr Anil Yendluri, the director and CEO of KPCL.
Apart several other sectors that the SEZ could focus on, Mr Yendluri said they would be setting up a timber import zone in the city as India imports a lot of timber.
The company has already invested $1.23 billion or Rs 8,000 crore out of the planned investment of $3 billion or Rs 19,554 crore for the port expansion. The port can handle 100 million tonnes of cargo once the second phase is completed.
According to him, the port aims to handle 55 million tonnes of cargo during the fiscal as against 45 million tonnes in the last year. It is expected to handle about seven lakh containers in the current year as compared to 4.81 lakh containers last year. “KPCL handled 45MMT of cargo in 2017-18 thus, achieving a 25 per cent growth over 36.10 MMT handled in the previous fiscal,” he said.
