• Mumbai Port has long been the principal gateway to India and has played a pivotal role in the development of the national economy, trade & commerce and prosperity of Mumbai city in particular.
• The port has achieved this position through continuous endeavor to serve the changing needs of maritime trade. Though traditionally designed to handle general cargo, over the years, the port has adapted to changing shipping trends and cargo packaging from break bulk to unitisation/palletisation and containerisation. Besides, it has also developed specialised berths for handling POL and chemicals.
• For decades, Mumbai Port was India’s premier port. Even today, with the development of other ports, it caters to 10% of the country’s sea-borne trade handled by Major Ports of the country in terms of volume. It caters about 19% of POL Traffic handled by Major Ports.
• Having weathered and survived many a changes in maritime trade in its long history, Mumbai Port is today facing challenges posed by competition from adjoining ports and private ports, changing traffic patterns, inherent physical constraints and continuing labour intensive operations, etc.
• However, Mumbai Port is taking various measures to render cost effective and quality services to the trade.

Location and salient features

• The Port of Mumbai is situated almost midway (Latitude 18o 54’ N, Longitude 72o 49’ E) on the West coast of India and is gifted with a natural deep water Harbour of about 400 square kilometres protected by the mainland of Konkan on its East and Island of Mumbai on its West. The deep waters in the Harbour provide ample shelter for shipping throughout the year. The approaches to the Harbour are well lighted, with the Prongs Lighthouse to the North, visible 27 kilometres and the Kennery Light House to the south visible 29 kms. The entrance of the Harbour which has approaches from the South-west is between Prongs Reef and the Thull Reef lying off the mainland to the South-east, a distance of about 9 kilometres.
• The main navigational Harbour Channel is, for the great part, a natural deep-water fairway. The channel has been deepened to 11 metres. With a mean high water neap tide of 3.3 metres, the channel is adequate to meet the requirement of a large number of cargo vessels, passenger ships and deep drafted tankers. With good lighting arrangements navigation is allowed at the port round the clock.

Dry Cargo Handling

• There is a enclosed wet dock namely Indira Dock having a total water area of 24.04 hectares and a quayage of about 4000 metres. The Indira Dock, has an Entrance Lock 228.6 metres long and 30.5 metres wide though which vessels can enter or leave the docks at any state of tide. There are 21 berths inside the basin and 5 berths along the harbour wall, with a designed depth of 9.14 metres and 7.5 metres respectively.
• The depth of berths inside the basin can be increased by 1.20 metres by impounding water by electric pumps. There are two berths on the Southward extension of East arm of the Indira Dock, namely Ballard Pier Station and Ballard Pier Extension.
• The Ballard Pier Extension berth, is 244 metres long and has a modern passenger Terminal Building. It has a designed depth of 9.75 metres CD The Ballard Pier Station berth caters to container vessels and has a designed depth of 9.1 metres CD.

Marine Oil Terminals

• For handling Crude oil and Petroleum products, there are four jetties at Jawahar Dweep. One of the jetties at Jawahar Dweep, which was commissioned in 1984 can handle tankers with the maximum loaded draft of 12.7 metres corresponding to 125,000 Displacement tons. \
• Two of the jetties can accommodate tankers upto 70,000 Displacement Tons and 228.6 m length and the third one can take tankers of 213.4 m length and upto 48,000 Displacement Tons.
• Chemical and POL products are handled at two jetties at Pir Pau. Old Pir Pau jetty can accommodate tankers of 170.7 m length while the new one commissioned in December 1996 can handle tankers with a length of 197 m and a draft of 10.5 m. All the jetties are connected to Oil Refineries by a network of pipelines.

Bunders

Besides the wet docks, there are along the harbour front a number of bunders and open wharves where the traffic carried by barges/sailing vessels are handled.

Dry Dock

The port has one dry dock, inside the Indira Dock, viz. Hughes Dry Dock which is 304 metres long.

Storage

There are transit sheds at most of the berths and a number of warehouses in the Port area for storage of uncleared cargo and pre-shipment storage of export cargo.

History

• Mumbai Harbour has been used by ships and boats for centuries. It was used by the Maratha Navy, as well as the British and Portuguese colonial navies. The first of the present-day docks of the Mumbai Port were built in the 1870s. Bombay Port Trust (BPT) was established as a corporation on 26 June 1873. BPT's founding chairman was Colonel J.A. Ballard.
• Port development was undertaken by the civil engineering partnership Sir John Wolfe-Barry and Lt Col Arthur John Barry as Joint Consulting Engineers to the Bombay Port Trust at the end of the nineteenth century.
• From its establishment, the port has been the gateway to India, and was a primary factor in the emergence of Mumbai as the commercial capital of India. The port and the corporation took their present names in the 1990s.
• Over the decades, the port underwent tremendous expansion, with the addition of berths and cargo handling capacities. However, Mumbai's expanding growth and population pressure constrained the growth of the port by the 1970s.
• This led to the establishment of the Nhava Sheva port across Mumbai Harbour in Navi Mumbai on the Konkan mainland. Nhava Sheva began operations in 1989, and most container traffic now flows through Nhava Sheva.