Adani invests $1 billion to quicken the operations of Navi Mumbai Airport

In order to commence its operations by December next year, the Adani Group has invested close to $1 billion in Navi Mumbai International Airport Ltd, as per news report.

Adani invested ₹1,710 crore of the ₹8,625 crore (approximately $991 million) total in the project as equity and obtained ₹2,900 crore in bank term loans. City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd (Cidco), a city planning agency in Maharashtra, provided an additional ₹3,655 crore. Adani and Cidco will invest an additional ₹1,511 crore as the project moves ahead.

“The due diligence by the banks has been recently completed, which was followed by the investment,” said one of the two people familiar with the development.

Group Chairman Gautam Adani on July 19 while addressing an annual general meeting of shareholders said that the Navi Mumbai airport will achieve operational readiness by December 2024.

“The plan is to start the first of the four international passenger terminals before December 2024,” said the person cited earlier. This terminal is expected to handle at least 20 million passengers and 300,000 tonnes of cargo every year. It will ease the load at the country’s busiest airport, the Mumbai international airport, which will see 51 million passengers traverse through it this fiscal.

The current round of funding is enough to build the first two of the planned five phases of the Navi Mumbai airport, this person added. The project requires an investment of $2.5 billion ( ₹20,853 crore), the person said. At least ₹12,770 crore is expected to be raised as term loans from a consortium of lenders, for which the required financial closure was completed last year and additional due diligence has been conducted over the past few months following the Hindenburg report, the person said.

The sources also reveal that the lenders in the consortium include State Bank of India, EXIM Bank of India, IDBI Bank, India Infrastructure Finance Co. Ltd, Union Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Central Bank of India and Bank of Maharashtra. The source also said that few loans have a tenure of up to 26 years.     

The Navi Mumbai airport project, with a capacity to serve 90 million passengers and handle 2.5 million tonnes of cargo annually, is expected to be finished in 2032. Located roughly 35 km from Mumbai Airport and spread across 1,160 hectares of land, the new airport will have four passenger terminals, one dedicated general aviation terminal, one cargo terminal, two runways and at least 42 aircraft parking areas in the first two phases and 245 aircraft stands at the end of the remaining three phases.