The Jawaharlal Nehru Port has emerged as the world's fastest-growing container port in a global list that features only one other port in its ranking of the top 30 ports for the first half of 2026.
The Mundra Port in Gujarat with a #26 ranking is the only other Indian port that found a place on the global ports ranking from France-based Alphaliner, a research and data platform for the liner shipping industry. It showed a growth of approximately 2.40 per cent over the same period.
The Jawaharlal Nehru Port handled 4.40 million TEUs from January to June this year, compared to 3.87 million TEUs over the same period last year, which reflects a growth of 13.6 per cent.
This strong growth—fuelled by strong Indian export-import (EXIM) demand, boosted terminal capacity, and the diversion of some West Asia-bound cargo to Indian ports amid the geopolitical crisis—has led to the port's ranking climbing by seven places from #28 to #21.
This puts it just behind the Colombo Port in Sri Lanka, which handled 4.44 million TEUs from January-July 2026—a 11.9 per cent increase from 3.97 million TEUs over the same period last year, and ranked 20th globally.
This gap between Colombo and the Mumbai-based port has now narrowed to just about 41,000 TEUs.
China continues to dominate the sector with six of its ports in the top ten, of which the Shanghai Port retained the top spot on the Alphaliner list with a cargo throughput of 28.7 million TEUs, but a growth of only 6.2 per cent.
On the heels of this strong growth, DP World has sought to extend its concession to operate the Nhava Sheva International Container Terminal (NSICT) at the Mumbai-based port, with its 30-year agreement due to expire next year.
The NSICT is one of the port's seven container terminals and the first in India to be developed privately under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode.
Hemant Kumar Ruia, the country manager for DP World’s Indian subcontinent business, told reporters that the Dubai-based operator had formally asked for more time at the terminal and that concession talks were underway.
The Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA) awarded the terminal to DP World on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis in July 1997, which went operational in April 1999, and is set to expire on July 2, 2027.
The facility has 600m of quay, a 15m draft, and a design capacity of 1.2 million TEUs per year. It also boasts eight quay cranes and 28 rubber-tyred gantry cranes.
