Technology sets pace for port transformation in South Asia

Technology sets pace for port transformation in South Asia

With India opening its economy to multiple new free-trade agreements, Sri Lanka’s transshipment volumes running ahead of expectations, and shipyards in both nations on the rise, South Asia’s port industry is set for transformative change.

Launched in 2021, The Maritime India Vision for 2030 foresees increasing major port capacity to over 2.5 billion metric tons per year by expanding existing facilities and developing greenfield sites to position India as a global logistics hub.

Adani Vizhinjam International Deepwater Seaport in Kerala. Image credit: ABB

The principle of port-led economic growth is supported by the unified legal framework of the Indian Ports Act 2025 and the shift to electronic trade documentation enabled by the Bill of Lading Act 2025. It is also central to the Sagarmala Programme [1] launched in 2015, whose 272 completed projects to date have focused on streamlining logistics, reducing costs, and enhancing trade competitiveness using coastal and waterway networks.

With the need for new shoreside capacity at strategic locations critical to the Indian economy as a whole, the scale and pace of infrastructure development is sometimes breathtaking. This makes it easy to lose sight of the key role that efficiency will play in the competitive claim made by new port facilities. However, the Maritime India Vision for 2030 includes a target to cut average vessel turnaround times in ports in half, as part of ambitions to attract container transshipment volumes from Singapore and Dubai.

‘’With local ABB teams working closely with technical experts and project managers in Dubai and Sweden, we were able to provide operations staff at CWIT and Adani Vizhinjam Port with outstanding support, and commission operations at pace.’’

Fredrik Johanson, Head of Sales, Business Line Ports, ABB’s Marine & Ports division

India signed seven new trade agreements between 2021 and 2025, compared to none in the previous decade. The shift reflects an increasing appetite to grow the export economy. India secured its first comprehensive agreement with a major Western country, the United Kingdom, in 2025, and momentum accelerated in early 2026, including a major deal with the EU’s 27 members [2] and a separate agreement with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

India is also seeking to update agreements with Japan, South Korea, Australia and ASEAN, and diversify exports in the Middle East Gulf, Eurasia and Latin America. This broad set of deals is likely to influence export routes.

Tushar Rahatekar, Head of Container Terminal Automation & Operations, Adani Vizhinjam Port. Image credit: ABB

For a nation whose GDP climbed from US$1.82 trillion in 2011 to US$4.13 trillion in 2025, the engagements are highly consequential for regional port industry ambitions. They demand significant expansion of cargo handling capacity and shoreside processing, refining and fabrication facilities to transform trade talks into traffic flows.

Capacity to change Over half of the traffic moving into and out of India by sea in fiscal year 2025 (ending March 31) passed through its 12 main ports.According to the Ministry of Ports, these facilities handled about 853,6 million metric tons, up 4.2 percent year on year [3]. Compared to this, volumes rose 11 percent in both fiscal years 2023 and 2024 and six percent in the 2025-26 year to July [4], meaning that box traffic has increased by almost 30 percent within three years.

Remote operations increase safety, support new talents and bring more female into the operation. Image credit: ABB

Plans underway to increase capacity include Galathea Bay Port, the deepwater transshipment terminal in the Bay of Bengal, and Vadhawan – the greenfield site 140 kilometers north of Mumbai. Harbor developments at Paradip, Chennai and Thoothukudi (formerly Tuticorin) are also expected to move existing ports into the ‘mega’ category. Meanwhile, Adani Ports and SEZ Ltd [5] merits close attention, with plans to invest a further US$18 billion in logistics around its huge Mundra port complex in Gujarat [6], develop a concession at Vadhawan and continue growing its terminal in Vizhinjam in Kerala, which opened in the end of 2024.

Jampala Raghuram, Regional Manager, Ports, ABB’s Marine & Ports division, with the ABB team at Adani Vizhinjam Port. Image credit: ABB

Realizing ambitions There has been a growing demand for regional facilities that are able to handle the largest container ships and ease pressure on existing ports. This is demonstrated by the latest developments such as the start of operations at Colombo West International Terminal in Sri Lanka and the Adani Vizhinjam International Deepwater Seaport in Kerala, as well as new capacity at Colombo’s East Container Terminal.

‘’These projects have also brought plenty of insight into how ABB can help other locations with similar needs to get up and running fast.’’

Opened in February 2025, Colombo West International Terminal released an initial 1.6 million TEUs of new annual capacity along 800 meters of berth, offering 20 meters of draft. Work is progressing to expand capacity to 3.2 million TEU along 1,400 meters of quay by the end of 2026. Handling around 100,000 TEU per month within six months of opening, Colombo West International Terminal (CWIT) contributed strongly to the 6.4 percent increase in Colombo’s overall container traffic last year, which reached 8.29 million TEU [7] having stalled in previous years due to lack of capacity. CWIT and the addition in January 2026 of a new (third) berth at Colombo ECT are the first fruit of plans to increase the port’s capacity to 24 million TEU by 2040.

Cargo vessel arriving at Vizhinjam terminal. Image credit: ABB

As the sole operator of Adani Vizhinjam port and a 51 percent shareholder in CWIT, Adani Ports appears comfortable with achieving growth targets for transshipment business across both terminals, which are only 220 kilometers apart.

Efficiency in the equation One reason for the confidence is that, far from simply representing a release valve for traffic, the competitive case for both terminals builds on a level of automation that is groundbreaking in the region.

For both CWIT and Adani Vizhinjam port, ABB is the provider of control, positioning and electrical systems for automated stacking cranes which are supervised remotely and ship-to-shore cranes which are operated remotely from air-conditioned offices away from the handling area. ABB is also supplying 40 fully automated end-loading stacking cranes to Sri Lanka Ports Authority for Colombo ECT.

The eight shoreside cranes and 18 stacking cranes CWIT brought into service last year were, respectively, Sri Lanka’s first remotely operated ship-to-shore units and its first automated yard cranes. Phase 2 developments see shoreside crane numbers rising to 14- and 30-yard cranes in service.

“CWIT is not just another container terminal; it’s a strategic turning point for Colombo, Sri Lanka, and the region,” according to Munish Kanwar, CEO, CWIT, speaking soon after the terminal opened last year. Growing demand, increasing ship sizes and fresh competition meant CWIT needed to achieve new levels of efficiency, as well as capacity. Transshipment involves a logistics cost for shipping lines and no extra revenue, so they don’t want to waste time waiting due to port capacity issues. According to Kanwar, the benefits of automation had become evident soon after start.

‘’ ABB is the master of its game on yard automation, and its collaborative approach was a key reason for its selection. ‘’

Fast acting automation “In greenfield terminals, a phased rollout of crane systems allows operations to begin quickly, delivering early returns on investment while laying the foundation for future expansion and advanced automation stages,” comments Fredrik Johanson, Head of Sales, Ports Business Line, ABB’s Marine & Ports division. “Automation achieves the uniformity and predictability shipping lines need to optimize planning, as well as the gains for productivity, safety and scalability that terminal operators desire, with systems also able to adapt quickly to ship scheduling changes,” he adds.

Tushar Rahatekar, Head of Container Terminal Automation & Operations at Adani Vizhinjam Port, concurs. “The performance of the terminal is crucial for the vessels that come here,” he says. “It has to be consistent and scalability has to be a given thing. Operations need to be robust and always up to the expectations of the shipping line. These requirements are solved largely by automation. Automated systems are always consistent, resilient and robust.”

Terminal managers also have up to date digital information about machinery, bringing additional opportunities to improve efficiency, while the consistency of automated operations also reduces wear and tear. Early in 2026, ABB and CWIT passed a new milestone in the automation program when the terminal executed its first automated landside container move by a ship-to-shore crane involving a manually driven terminal tractor. ABB is also continuing work to refine chassis recognition automation to speed up the transfer of the transshipped containers that are exchanged between terminals in Colombo by external trucks.

“Another large benefit of automation is the extremely enhanced operational safety,” says Rahatekar. “When we take the crane operators away from the terminal and bring them into a nice office environment, operational safety increases by leaps and bounds.”

Both Rahatekar and Kanwar note that technology is ‘gender neutral’. Kanwar adds that women account for 25 percent of personnel at CWIT’s remote crane center.

Hubs ramp up performance ABB has established a regional service center operating out of India, offering local teams working on site, supported by a global team with extensive practical experience in terminal automation. “We have been expanding our local presence and working hard to ensure that capabilities are a match for ambitions in the region,” says Jampala Raghuram, Regional Manager, Ports, ABB’s Marine & Ports division.

With local ABB teams working closely with technical experts and project managers in Dubai and Sweden, we were able to provide operations staff at CWIT and Adani Vizhinjam Port with outstanding support, and commission operations at pace,” comments Raghuram.

Jimmy Bhansari, Assistant Vice President, Adani Infra says of the Vizhinjam project: “ABB gave us a really good guide as to what the automation solution is for the terminal. They really helped us in terms of selecting the right technology for our port and developing the roadmap to automation for the terminal, while the partnering is very successful.”

Similarly, Munish Kanwar comments: “ABB is the master of its game on yard automation, and its collaborative approach was a key reason for its selection.”

“These projects have also brought plenty of insight into how ABB can help other locations with similar needs to get up and running fast,” Raghuram concludes.

Ports industry potential For ABB, investing in local skills is essential, not least because transshipment is only one aspect of the transformation underway across South Asia’s ports industry.

Increasingly, ports across the region are seeking to ensure that investments in maritime growth minimize impact on the environment, for example. While greater use of electrification will reduce emissions – in port equipment and for ships connected to the grid at the quayside – higher demand can challenge the resilience of the power infrastructure: solving these challenges is a core competence for ABB.

Accordingly, Indian ports are aligning with Sustainable Development Goals through initiatives such as the ‘Harit Sagar: Green Port Guidelines’, with a focus on project for electrification, biodiversity and circularity that aim for a 30 percent cut in emissions by 2030 and net-zero by 2047.

Shore power, which allows ships to significantly reduce emissions at the quayside by turning off their main engines and using electricity from the grid is a key strand in this program. All 12 existing major Indian ports have infrastructure to support shore power, although only two offer connections for cargo ships. ABB has shore power references at over 50 ports and on-board multiple vessel types around the world, applying proven solutions to reduce emissions at berth.

“ABB gave us a really good guide as to what the automation solution is for the terminal.’’

Toward a leaner and cleaner maritime future Regional shipbuilding capabilities are also rapidly on the rise, and ABB systems are at the heart of yard innovations. Close relations between ABB and Colombo Dockyard PLC strengthened through the construction of a 100-meter cable layer and repair vessel Sophie Germain for Orange Marine, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Orange Group specializing in submarine cable work, and the first European customer to order a ship of this type in Sri Lanka.

ABB delivered twin 1.8-megawatt Azipod® propulsion units and the power energy management system to meet the needs on maneuverability, fuel efficiency and station-keeping in challenging conditions.

This was recently followed up with a new contract to supply a fully integrated electrical power, propulsion and automation system for two newbuild cable repair vessels with similar design features as Sophie Germain

Meanwhile, India’s Government is encouraging the type of cluster-based approach for the nation’s shipyard which has worked so well for South Korea, with the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways encouraging domestic shipbuilders to develop fuel-efficient and technologically advanced vessels.

The projects which advance shipbuilding capabilities already underway include Cochin Shipyard’s construction of two 135-meter container vessels for Samskip, each powered by a 3.2MW fuel cell. They will also feature the latest compact version of ABB Onboard DC Grid™ power distribution system for optimal energy us, as well as ABB’s energy storage solution control and automation.

Among the world’s first of their kind to use hydrogen as fuel, these ships offer a remarkable example of how ambitious regional plans and technical expertise from ABB are working in partnership to change the face of shoreside industries.

According to Madhu S Nair, Chairman and Managing Director, Cochin Shipyard Limited, the partnership is strengthening the shipyard’s position as an early mover in sustainable technology and supporting India’s vision to become a Global Hub for building Green Ships [12].

The maritime sector in South Asia is changing fast, driving innovation and technological advancement. Ongoing investments in port capacity, electrification, green port initiatives, and modern shipbuilding projects aim to meet ambitious growth targets and environmental goals, and companies are addressing new challenges and rapidly evolving technologies to solve them, committed to a leaner and cleaner maritime industry. Source: ABB