V.O. Chidambaranar Port Authority (VOCPA) in Tuticorin has floated a Rs 9,860 crore global tender for its long-awaited Outer Harbour Development Project under the Hybrid Annuity Mode (HAM), a move it hopes to significantly upgrade India’s container and cargo handling on the southern coast.
According to the Notice Inviting Tender (NIT), the bid is for “construction of breakwater, rock bund, wharf and capital dredging and reclamation for backup yard and allied onshore facilities including maintenance thereof” as part of the Outer Harbour development.
The indicative project cost is Rs 9,859.45 crore, with bidding documents on sale from December 26, 2025, to February 6, 2026, through the government e-tender portal and VOCPA’s website.
The NIT specifies a bid document fee of Rs 11.63 lakh (including GST) and a bid security (earnest money) of about Rs 116.34 crore, with online bid submission closing at 3 pm on February 9 and opening at 3.30 pm on February 10, 2026.
Prospective bidders can raise queries till January 7, 2026, and a pre-application conference will be held on 8 January in hybrid mode.
"This transformative initiative will deliver two state-of-the-art deep-draft terminals, each featuring a 1,000-metre quay length and 18-metre draft," said the V.O. Chidambaranar Port Authority, Tuticorin, in a post on X.
This is reportedly at least the third attempt to kick-start the outer harbour project, which had earlier tenders cancelled due to a lack of bidders and was previously structured under DBFOT and VGF models.
Shifting to HAM—used widely in road projects—is expected to "de-risk" developers by combining government support with annuity payments, making the project more bankable. The outer harbour plan is part of a larger vision of adding about four million TEUs of container capacity through two deep‑water terminals, each about 1 km long, and allowing 18‑metre draft vessels over time.
As per the 46th administration report of the V.O. Chidambaranar Port, it handled 41.72MMT in FY2024-25, much lower than the original Sagarmala plan for it, which estimated it to reach 75–83MMT by 2025.