India builds up port facilities in bid to be export giant

Aggressive drive comes as global manufacturers seek alternative to China

The Rishiri Galaxy, a Panamian-flagged tanker 1/2 times the length of a football field, sat tethered to the dock on a muggy day at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port on the west coast of India.

Freshly arrived from the Persian Gulf, it bore industrial chemicals raw materials for Indian factories that make pharmaceuticals, auto parts, cosmetics, construction materials and scores of other modern concoctions.

At a second terminal nearby, overhead cranes plucked shipping containers off another vessel operated by Maersk, the Danish shipping conglomerate, lowering them into lorries. The lorries would haul this cargo - electronics from South Korea, palm oil from Indonesia, machinery from Europe - to warehouses throughout the world's most populous country.

Roughly one of every four shipping containers passing through India is loaded or unloaded at this port, on the docks jutting into the Arabian Sea just south of Mumbai.

The flow of containers has roughly tripled over the past two decades, reaching the equivalent of 6.4 million 20-foot boxes in 2023. Yet by the standards of the world's largest ports many of them in China - it remains a small operation.

India is now pursuing an aggressive campaign to catch up, readying plans for new ports while expanding existing docks. Whether those designs come to fruition and how quickly could shape the results of one of India's grandest aspirations: swelling into a fullfledged manufacturing and export colossus.