Less than a year after the first phase was inaugurated on May 2, 2025, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday inaugurated the subsequent phases of Vizhinjam International Transhipment Seaport. This bullet-speed, all-encompassing phase will be completed in 2028, 17 years ahead of the original schedule. It will merge the second, third and fourth phases that were to be realised only by 2045.

When this second and final phase is completed, Vizhinjam Seaport is expected to handle 57 lakh TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) annually; TEUs are the giant cargo crates stacked together in ports.

The first phase target was 10 lakh TEUs. "This was achieved by around 10 months itself," Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said while delivering the inaugural address at the Vizhinjam Seaport.

He said the port had by now handled 15.3 lakh TEUs. "In December alone, the port had handled 1,21 lakh TEUs," the CM said. After the expansion, the Vizhinjam port can handle 28,840 TEUs at a time.

Though the CM said 615 ships, including big mother ships, had anchored at the port since operations began, Minister for Ports Vasavan had earlier given a higher figure of 710 ships. "50 ships reach this port every month. We are very close to reaching the milestone of 1000 ships," the CM said.

Mother of all ports
In the final phase, the length of the breakwater, which now is 2.96 km, will be extended to 3.88 km. The breakwater is the outer rock-filled construction that encloses the water channel within the harbour. "The Vizhinjam backwater is now the country's deepest," the CM said.

The container berth where ships dock, and which is now 800 metres or less than one km, will be extended to 2000 metres or 2 km by 2028. Now, two big ships can anchor. Once the container berth is 2 km, five mother ships can dock at the port simultaneously. "Already ships that went to ports like Colombo and Singapore are now using Vizhinjam," the CM said.

In this final phase, there will be no land acquisition. 55 acres of land will be reclaimed from the sea to expand the container berth.

Adani's turn to spend
Another unique feature is that during this phase, it will be the private concessionaire, Adani Vizhinjam Port Private Limited (AVPPL), that will spend. ₹10,000 crore is the promised investment.

The AVPPL Managing Director, Karan Adani, said his company would make a cumulative investment of ₹30,000 crore in Vizhinjam. "This will be the largest investment by any business house in Kerala," Adani said.

In the first phase, more than 60 per cent of the project cost was incurred by Kerala. The Chief Minister pegged the figure at ₹5500 crore. Kerala took on the role of the chivalrous male in the partnership.

When Adani's pocket was spared
Documents show that under its agreement with the Kerala government, AVPPL had to shell out only ₹1226.70 crore.

Of this, ₹817 crore was borne by the Centre as viability gap funding. As part of an Arbitration Settlement Agreement, which was entered into after Ockhi and Covid-induced delays, an additional ₹219 crore was deducted. By March 31, 2025, the AVPPL had to shell out just Rs 219 crore.

Finance Minister K N Balagopal laid down the cost-sharing in simpler terms. "If 62 paise was the state government's contribution, Adani's was 28 paise. The remaining 10 paise was the Centre's share," Balagopal said.

Battle for credit
The Chief Minister took evident pride that the project would be completed 17 years in advance. He sold this as proof of his government's resolve.

"The biggest slight that we had suffered is that nothing gets done in Kerala. It is by implementing such projects that we replied to such insults," the CM said. "We have turned around the situation in such a way that people now say that big things happen in Kerala," he said.

Opposition leader V D Satheesan, who spoke after the Chief Minister, tried to undermine this claim. Right at the outset, he called former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy as the "architect of Vizhinjam". Karan Adani, too, credited Chandy for the initial momentum the project got.

If the CM said the final project completion has been brought ahead from 2045 to 2028, the opposition leader said the first phase was badly delayed. "The first phase should have been inaugurated in 2019. It was, but delayed by five years," Satheesan said. Further, he said that the government had not been able to provide road and rail connectivity even after 11 years.  

(The access road that connects Vizhinjam port road to NH66 was inaugurated by the CM on Saturday. However, rail connectivity will take more time as there is an underground stretch that is caught up in environmental concerns.)

Satheesan also criticised the government for not creating the fishing harbour and fish processing park that was promised for the fisherfolk. He said the outer ring road was in limbo and that even land acquisition for the Vizhinjam growth corridor, which could take the benefits of the port to the entire state, had not started.

The CM had earlier attributed the delay to natural disasters - Ockhi cyclone, the 2018 floods, Covid - and the fisherfolk's anti-port agitation in 2022.

Chinese Trap
It was left to Finance Minister Balagopal to counter Satheesan. Balagopal acknowledged the roles of former chief ministers E K Nayanar, V S Achuthanandan and Oommen Chandy but said: "One cannot ignore the determination of the Pinarayi Vijayan government in pushing through this project that was buffeted by innumerable headwinds," he said.

If the Vizhinjam port could not be realised earlier, Balagopal suggested that the Congress-led UPA government was to blame. "During Achuthanandan's tenure, the tender was nearly floated. But the then defence minister (A K Antony) refused permission citing Chinese involvement in the winning consortium," Balagopal, who was Achuthanandan's political secretary, said.

The group that won the Vizhinjam techno-economic bid in 2006 was a consortium of three companies that included Mumbai-based Zoom Developers and two Chinese firms: Kaidi Electric Power and China Harbour Engineering Company.