Kakinada About this sound pronunciation (help·info) is a city in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It is a municipal corporation located in Kakinada (urban) mandal of Kakinada revenue division and also the district headquarters of East Godavari district. It is the 4th most populous city of the state.
Kakinada has been selected as one of the hundred Indian cities to be developed as a smart city under PM Narendra Modi's flagship Smart Cities Mission.
Kakinada is located at 16.93°N 82.22°E. The 82-degrees east longitude passes through the city. It has an average elevation of 2 metres (6 ft), and many areas of the city are below sea level. The city has a rough north-south orientation in a long, narrow strip parallel to the coast. The average width of the city is about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi), and it is about 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) long.
The city consists of two regions, connected by bridges. The southern part, Jagannathapuram, is separated from the rest of the city by the Buckingham Canal. The canal and its branches form Medaline Island, which abuts the city in the southwest. During the colonisation of the Dutch Coromandel coast, the Dutch East India Company maintained a trading post known as Jaggernaikpoeram or Jaggernaickpuram (among other spellings) to the English.
The northern area of Kakinada is the more modern part of the city, with its recent extension. An industrial belt, running north–south the length of the city, separates the eastern part from the coast. Kakinada is bordered on the southeast by Kakinada Bay and a marshy wetland, home to India's second largest mangrove forest and the Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary. A branch of the Godavari River, the Gouthami, flows into the Bay of Bengal at this point.
Kakinada has a tropical savanna climate with hot, humid weather most of the year. The warmest time of the year is late May and early June, with maximum temperatures around 38–42 °C (100–108 °F). January is the coolest month, with minimum temperatures of 18–20 °C (64–68 °F). The city gets most of its seasonal rainfall from the southwest monsoon, although considerable rain also falls during the northeast monsoon (from mid-October to mid-December). Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal frequently strike the city. Kakinada's prevailing winds are from the southwest for most of the year, except from October to January when they are from the northeast. The city's average annual rainfall is 110–115 centimetres (43–45 in).
Port
Hope Island, about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the coast, makes Kakinada Port a natural harbour. It is home to two ports: an anchorage port and a deep-water port. Kakinada's deep-water port is the second-largest in the state (after Visakhapatnam port) and the first in the country built in a public-private partnership, in 1996. It is operated by Kakinada Seaports.Before the deep-water port was built, the anchorage port was the largest of India's 40 minor ports. A shipyard is under construction (a joint venture of Singapore-based Sembawang Shipyard and Kakinada Seaports) to provide support services to ships around Kakinada and the east coast of India.
Red-and-white lighthouse at night
The Vakalapudi Lighthouse serves the port of Kakinada.
Kakinada's principal exports include seafood (prawns, shrimp, fish) and related products, agricultural products (including rice and corn, oilmeals, processed food products, chemicals, iron ore, bauxite powder and biofuel.Imports include chemicals, edible oils and agricultural products (including wheat and sugar).
Industrial sector
Fertilizer
Factory with two smokestacks
Godavari Fertilizer plant
Kakinada is known as the "Fertilizer City" of Andhra Pradesh. The city is home to two fertiliser producers: Nagarjuna Fertilizers (the largest urea manufacturer in coastal Andhra) and Godavari Fertilizers (owned by Murugappa Group, and producing diammonium hydrogen phosphate).
Agro−products
Coconuts are exported by several companies in and around Kakinada. The Murugappa Group-owned EID Parry (India) and Cargill International joint venture, Silk Road Sugars, has a port-based stand-alone sugar refinery in Kakinada with a capacity of 600,000 tonnes.
Glass-block office building at night
ONGC India—Kakinada office
Edible oil refineries and biofuel plants
In 2002, several edible-oil refineries were established in Kakinada, with a refining capacity of 3,000 tons per day; they include Acalmar Oils and Fats (taken over by Adani Wilmar), Ruchi Infrastructure and Nikhil Refineries. The port facilitates the importation of crude palm and soybean oil.
Vakalapudi Industrial Park has attracted over $10 million in investment from biodiesel companies such as Reliance Industries, Natural Bioenergy and Universal Bio Fuel. Andhra Pradesh has entered into an agreement with Reliance Industries for jatropha planting. The company selected 200 acres (81 ha) of land in Kakinada to grow jatropha for quality biodiesel fuel.
IT/ITES
Kakinada is a tier-II city. Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) established a facility here in 2007. Since then, several IT companies have come up in the city, mainly due to its educated workforce.
Power generation
There are several power plants in and around Kakinada. Spectrum Power Generation has a 208-MW plant, and was one of the first Independent Power Producers in the country. The company is planning to expand the capacity to 1350 MW in phases. Tenders for a 350-MW expansion have been requested.[37] A 220-MW power station (being expanded to 2400 MW at a cost of Rs 100 billion) owned by Reliance Energy[38] and a 464-MW combined-cycle power plant by GVK Group are in operation at Samalkota (Kakinada Rural). These plants supply electricity to the state's transmission utility, AP Transco, under a power purchase agreement.
Natural gas and petroleum
Kakinada is the base for Oil and Natural Gas Corporation's Eastern Offshore Asset. Several oil companies use Kakinada for oil and gasoline shipments. Baker Hughes and Schlumberger are field-development companies working on offshore natural-gas fields near the city. The Krishna Godavari Basin is considered the largest natural-gas basin in India.[39] Significant discoveries of oil and natural gas were made by Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation and Reliance, which has been extracting gas from its KG D6 block off the Kakinada coast. Reliance has an onshore terminal in Gadimoga, about 25 kilometres (16 mi) from Kakinada, to process and distribute gas to other parts of the country. Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure (RGTIL) has built a 1,440-kilometre (890 mi) pipeline from Kakinada to Bharuch (Gujarat) to transport 120 million cubic meters per day (mcmd) of natural gas from the Krishna-Godavari fields (owned by Reliance Industries)[40] across India to its west coast.
In 2010, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board awarded Kakinada's gas-distribution project to Bhagyanagar Gas, a consortium of GAIL and Hindustan Petroleum.[41] Construction is underway to supply gas to Kakinada and the surrounding towns of Samalkot, Peddapuram and Pithapuram, making Kakinada the second city in Andhra Pradesh to have a piped gas supply for domestic, commercial and industrial purposes (along with Vijayawada). |
