‘Vizhinjam’ India’s first transshipment & semi-automated port: An explainer
Thiruvananthapuram: Vizhinjam is India’s first dedicated transshipment port and also the country’s first semi-automated port.
It sits just 10 nautical miles from a key international shipping route and has naturally deep waters, making it ideal for large cargo ships.
Until now, about 75 per cent of India’s transshipment containers were handled by Colombo Port in Sri Lanka, leading to significant losses in foreign exchange and revenue. Vizhinjam is expected to bring much of that traffic back to India.
The port has received the highest ever investment from a state government in India. The Kerala government is funding two-thirds of the project’s total cost, including the full cost of building the breakwater—a key part of the infrastructure that ensures the port operates smoothly in all weather.
The breakwater at Vizhinjam is the deepest in India and stretches nearly three kilometres. At 28 metres tall—the height of a nine-storey building—it is a major engineering achievement.
Trial operations began on July 13, 2024, and full commercial operations started on December 3, 2024. During the three-month trial phase, over 272 large vessels docked at the port, and more than 550,000 containers were handled.
Vizhinjam is equipped with fully automated yard cranes and remotely operated ship-to-shore cranes for faster and safer operations. It also features India’s first home-built, AI-powered Vessel Traffic Management System, developed with IIT Madras.
In early 2025, Vizhinjam topped the list of ports on India’s southern and western coasts for container cargo handling, managing over 100,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) per month.
A major milestone came when Vizhinjam berthed the MSC Turkey, one of the largest cargo ships to ever reach India.
Another significant development is Vizhinjam’s inclusion in the Jade Service of MSC, the world’s largest shipping company. This major cargo route connects Europe and Asia via South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. Vizhinjam is now becoming the main hub for South Asia on this route.
MSC includes only high-capacity ports in its key services, making Vizhinjam’s inclusion during its trial phase a major achievement. The port now joins global giants like Qingdao, Shanghai, Busan, and Singapore.
Ships in the Jade Service will sail from Singapore to Vizhinjam, then continue to ports in Spain and Italy. This means more containers coming to India will arrive directly at Vizhinjam and be distributed to other ports using smaller feeder ships.
Vizhinjam is also being developed as a multi-modal hub, with direct road access to National Highway 66 and Kerala’s first cloverleaf interchange to handle future cargo growth. A railway link connecting the port to the national network will begin construction soon.
By 2028, the next phase of construction is expected to be complete, giving the port an annual capacity of at least 3 million TEUs. This phase will cost Rs 10,000 crore, which will be fully funded by Adani Ports.
Vizhinjam is now, in fact, the Indian subcontinent’s only transshipment hub and its location - 10 nautical miles (19km) from the east-west shipping channel - gives the Indian shipping industry and economy a big boost.
The port is located within an easy distance of the east-west shipping channel which connects Europe and North America to East Asian countries. This makes it cost- and time-efficient for cargo ships operating from one side of the world to the other to berth.
Through Vizhinjam port, Indian exporters and importers can begin to recover additional costs - between $80 to $100 per container - because India did not have a transshipment terminal.
The geographical advantages of the port location are complemented by easy access to existing rail and road networks, making it easy and cost-efficient to move cargo inland.
National Highway 47, which connects Salem and Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu, is just 2km from the port, and rail networks connecting Vizhinjam to other parts of the country are 12km away. Trivandrum International Airport is just 15km from the port.
For all these reasons Vizhinjam International Seaport has been identified as a key priority project for the government, a point the Prime Minister stressed as he commissioned it.
