Adani Ports Puts Up to $100m Behind AI — Across Fifteen Terminals

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), India's largest port operator, has expanded its partnership with US supply-chain software firm Kaleris into a multi-year, up-to-$100m programme that will deploy Kaleris' AI-augmented operating platform across 15 container terminals at nine domestic and international ports. This is not a pilot: it builds on first-phase deployments already live at six ports and scales advanced planning, optimisation and automation across the network. What the AI does: Kaleris' Advanced Optimization layer continuously recomputes how cranes, yard space and terminal trucks are sequenced, squeezing idle moves and dead time out of the operation. The numbers APSEZ is underwriting: the company expects up to a 20% improvement in Rubber-Tyred Gantry crane productivity and up to 14% in terminal-truck productivity, and projects the AI-led system will add roughly 91 million tonnes — about 10% of current capacity — by 2030. The spend sits inside a broader $850m outlay on decarbonisation, technology and capacity as APSEZ chases one billion tonnes of annual cargo handling. Why this matters for ship managers: the terminal operator increasingly owns the algorithm that sets your berth window and turnaround, and APSEZ handles a large share of India's container throughput — better crane and yard orchestration there flows straight into schedule reliability and demurrage exposure for lines calling those ports, and India already handles a large share of the country's container throughput, so improvements there ripple across an entire trade lane. The honest caveat: the headline gains are vendor-and-operator projections tied to a phased rollout through 2030, not audited results — so watch for measured, before-and-after turnaround numbers from named terminals as the deployment scales rather than taking the productivity percentages on faith. [Smart Maritime Network · APSEZ · Kaleris]

This story is part of the Maritime AI Digest of 12 July 2026.

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