THE FOREST OF container-handling cranes that Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA) chairman Unmesh Sharad Wagh can see from his office in Uran, Navi Mumbai, has been overtaken in importance by another forest: of over 100,000 mangrove trees that it has developed to achieve its green goals. Mangroves protect coastlines from erosion, and JNPA has no usable shoreline with the required draft in its current location.

“Here, we can’t expand capacity further, because the waterfront is not available. The city is fast-developing, and this well-planned port has no scope for further development,” Wagh says. When JNPT began operating 36 years ago as India’s first container port, it reported a throughput of 34,000 TEUs, or twenty-foot equivalent units — the standard 20-foot-long container box used by the shipping industry.

Today, JNPA’s capacity is 10.4 million TEUs, but it handled 7.04 million TEUs in 2024-25. JNPA was ranked 26th worldwide, way behind No. 1, China’s Shanghai, which has a throughput of 50 million TEUs. It handles half of the container traffic at India’s major ports.

The JNPA and Gautam Adani’s Mundra, India’s largest container port, together handle over 65% of the container traffic on India’s western seaboard, the Arabian Sea. India’s container traffic increased by over 70% in the last decade and is expected to reach nearly 26.6 million TEUs by 2028, with an average annual growth rate of 3.1%.

However, with JNPA operating near its optimal capacity, India requires additional container ports.

Wagh, an officer of the Indian Revenue Service, is now tweaking JNPA’s efficiency while spending more time on Vadhvan, a beach village 150 km from Mumbai, near Dahanu in Maharashtra’s Palghar district, where the government plans to build one of the world’s Top 10 ports. Wagh is also the chairman and MD of Vadhvan Port Projects Ltd, a special purpose vehicle formed by the JNPA and the Maharashtra Maritime Board (MMB).

According to the 2011 Census, Vadhvan had 296 households with a population of 1,278. Its destiny changed forever on August 30 last year, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the site to lay the foundation stone for a ₹76,200-crore port, which is expected to have a cargo capacity of 300 million tonnes a year by 2030, upon completion of the first phase.

Wings of change

Vadhvan will also feature India’s first offshore airport, located on another island constructed from land reclaimed from the sea, similar to Hong Kong’s Chep Lap Kok Airport and Japan’s Kansai International Airport. Mumbai will get its third major airport (the second, Navi Mumbai International Airport at Panvel, is yet to be completed). The airport will be connected to the port via a trestle bridge of over 1 km, which will connect the approach roads from land to the port terminals and liquid terminals adjacent to the 10 km-plus breakwaters.

Maharashtra’s chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, said at the recent India Middle East Europe Corridor Summit in Mumbai that Vadhvan port would be a ‘game changer’, from Day One, and it will be amongst the ‘first 10 ports of the world’. Maharashtra has tapped Indian financial institutions for $50 billion and is in talks with foreign investors for an additional $50 billion for infrastructure projects, Fadnavis said.

Those big-ticket projects will transform the face of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and its suburbs, including Raigad, Thane, and Navi Mumbai, as well as the adjacent western Maharashtra districts of Pune, Palghar, Nashik, Nagpur, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, and Dhule. Navi Mumbai and Vadhvan will act as catalysts with ports and international airports. The government’s vision: two more cities like Mumbai.

Mother of all ports

Maharashtra’s two major ports, the JNPA and Mumbai Port, have been facing issues in evacuating cargo, navigating city traffic, and limited draft, which allows only small ships to berth. Various governments in the state have been looking for a third large port for decades.

The seabed off Vadhvan has a natural depth of 20 metres, making it ideal for large vessels. Although JNPA and the MMB signed a memorandum of understanding in June 2015 to establish a port at Vadhvan as JNPA’s satellite, it took several years for the project to complete the required studies and get the clearances to progress from the blueprint stage. JNPA holds a 74% stake in the SPV Vadhvan Port Project Ltd (VPPL), while the MMB holds the remaining 26%. The port is being developed in a private-public partnership model.

Vadhvan will be India’s 13th major port, with a capacity three times that of JNPA. It will feature nine container terminals with 18 berths in the first phase, boasting a combined container handling capacity of 23.5 million TEUs. By 2035, it is expected to have another 14.3 million TEUs.

Vadhvan has huge locational advantages: it is just 140 km from Mumbai, 150 km north of JNPT, 180 km south of Surat in Gujarat, and 160 km west of Nashik. The port will be located 12 km from the planned Delhi-Mumbai Freight Corridor, 34 km from the Delhi-Mumbai National Highway (NH-8), 22 km from the Mumbai-Vadodara Expressway, and 10 km from the national railway grid.

Wagh says the port will have dedicated road and rail connectivity and will not require even a single displacement of villagers, as the land necessary for constructing roads is in farmland and forest areas. It will need only 575 hectares for a connection with NH-8, he adds. The bullet train between Ahmedabad and Mumbai will also have a stop near Vadhvan.

The project will come up in phases to prevent the creation of overcapacity. “In the first phase, we will create four container terminals, three multi-purpose terminals, four liquid terminals and one Ro-Ro terminal, which will be ready by 2030,” says Wagh. The second phase may take another five to seven years.

In the first phase, ₹40,000-48,000 crore will be spent to reclaim 1,448 ha (hectares) from the seabed. ITD Cementation India Ltd, a specialist in infrastructure development for over 90 years, has secured an EPC or engineering-procurement-construction contract worth ₹1,648 crore for the near-shore reclamation and shore protection of over 200 ha. ITD Cementation will begin work after the monsoon, sometime in September. Man Infra Construction and Navayuga Engineering Company were the other two bidders who qualified for the contract. ITD Cementation, formerly part of the Italian-Thai Development Public Company, is now owned by the Adani Group’s Dubai-based entity, Renew Exim DMCC, which acquired a majority stake in the company in January for approximately ₹5,757 crore through an open offer after equity acquisition of over 44%.

Vadhvan will be a landlord port, similar to JNPA, owning the land and basic infrastructure, such as quays, berths, and navigation channels, but leasing them to private companies for port operations on a long-term basis, typically for 60 years. The port authority will also be the regulator. “Major global operators are lining up, and we have signed up with 10 companies for four terminals. There is good demand and many are ready to invest,’’ says Wagh. Switzerland’s Terminal Investment Ltd, which develops and manages container terminals across 31 countries, has committed to investing ₹20,000 crore.

Equity investment is not an issue for GMM and JNPA, a cash-surplus company. “We have ₹7,000 crore in the bank for this project, and the remaining ₹6,000 crore will come in the next two to three years,” says Wagh.

A string of airports and new cities

Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC), an SPV set up by the state government to plan, build, operate and maintain airports, has been asked to appoint a consultant to prepare a project report and feasibility study on the proposed Vadhvan international airport.

For now, all eyes are on Adani’s NMIA at Panvel in Navi Mumbai, which is designed to handle 20 million passengers and 500,000 tonnes of cargo a year, in the first phase, with a planned expansion to 90 million passengers and 3.2 million tonnes of cargo.

Jeet Adani, director, Adani Airport Holdings Ltd, says NMIA will redefine Indian aviation by easing the burden on Mumbai’s existing airport and significantly improving connectivity across the MMR region.

“For over a decade, MMR has been underserved due to capacity constraints at CSMIA (Mumbai airport) and with NMIA now operational, we’re reigniting the region’s aviation potential,’’ Jeet Adani says.

Wagh says the new airport will add to JNPA’s business. “For example, we have developed a world-class agri-processing zone in our SEZ and perishable agri-products can be exported as air cargo from here,’’ he says.

Numerous hotels and real estate projects are taking shape in and around Navi Mumbai. Mumbai Trans Harbour Sea Link (Atal Setu), Panvel-Karjat Rail Corridor, Navi Mumbai Metro, coastal roads, International Corporate Park in Kharghar, similar to the Bandra-Kurla Complex in Mumbai, and several other big housing and commercial realty projects are taking shape in the region.

The state government’s City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Ltd (CIDCO) will develop the Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area (NAINA), touted as the ‘third Mumbai’, around the NMIA. Approximately 170 villages in and around Pen, Panvel, and Uran talukas of Raigad district will be developed into theme-based zones, including an ‘Edu-City’ with 10 world-class universities, a Sports City, a Medicine City, a Knowledge City, an Innovation City, and others.

CIDCO plans to invest over ₹20,000 crore to create world-class infrastructure in the 371-sq.-km NAINA region. The Adani Group is planning a ₹10,000-crore real estate project spanning over 1,000 acres near NMIA. Last year, the Maharashtra cabinet approved a project to establish a semiconductor manufacturing plant in Panvel. The $10-billion (₹83,947 crore) project is a joint venture between Tower Semiconductor and the Adani Group. Several other large industrial projects in renewable energy and new energy forms are also being planned in the region.

Very soon, many Mumbai-like cities may emerge in Maharashtra, provided the plans are implemented. The popular song Yeh hai Bombay meri jaan (This is Bombay, my dear) will soon have to add city names! And Jeena yahan (living here) will no longer be difficult, given the infrastructure projects coming up.