Gandhinagar, The Gujarat government on Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the private infrastructure company, Adani Port & SEZ Ltd., to setup the country's largest multi-modal logistics park at Sanand with an estimated investment of Rs 50,000 crore.

The proposed 1,450 acre park will have a dedicated air cargo complex with 4.6 km long runway to handle even large sized cargo aircraft and will offer direct air, rail and road connectivity. It will also have a provision of direct rail connectivity with dedicated freight corridor which is part of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC).

It will have potential to generate direct and indirect employment for 25,000 persons.

According to the state government, the project will be completed in a phased manner in three years as the work will commence within six months after obtaining required clearances and permissions.

There will be a 90 lakh sq ft warehouse zone with facilities such as air freight station, grade-A warehouse, cold storage among others in the park. The warehouse will have 38 lakh sq ft space for textile, bulk, e-commerce, nine lakh sq ft space for bonder warehouse, four lakh grade-A palatized facility and 60,000 temperature controlled palletized facility. Against 3.3 lakh capacity, a container yard in this park will have four handling lines with TEU (twenty ft equivalents).

The park will have three lakh square feet of space for business and skill development centre.

The Central government has sanctioned Rs 2 lakh crore for setting up of multi-modal mega logistics parks in 34 cities of the country. Cities like Vijayawada, Chennai, Nagpur, Bengaluru, Surat, Hyderabad and Gauhati are selected among others. Six cities of Gujarat are selected, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat,Bharuch, Valsad and Kandla, where these projects will be set up on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model.

60 per cent of the cargo in the country is transferred via road. The transportation cost is 14 per cent of the GDP in the country, which the Central government wants to bring down to 7 per cent.