Maersk says it is exploring sourcing containers from Indian companies a quiet line that lands just as New Delhi commits ₹10,000 crore to building container plants of its own.
The line came out of India Maritime Week 2025, bundled with bigger headline numbers: a USD 2 billion APM Terminals expansion at Pipavav, two vessels reflagged under the Indian flag, a new GIFT City entity. The container item was the smallest of the lot and the most revealing. India moves about 14 million TEUs a year through its ports and builds almost none of the boxes that carry them.
Maersk is exploring Indian boxes, not buying them yet
The company described exploring local manufacturing and the procurement of containers from Indian companies, sharing technical specifications and quality requirements for seaworthy boxes, working toward a domestic production roadmap. No contract. No named supplier. No volume. Ahmed Hassan, Maersk’s head of asset strategy, framed it as a bet on India’s technical capability rather than a purchase order. Intent, not invoice.
It is worth knowing who is making the bet. Maersk agreed in 2021 to sell its own container manufacturer, Maersk Container Industry, to China’s CIMC. The box business is one Maersk already decided it did not want to own. Now it wants India to.
China makes the box, and has for a generation
India produces roughly 30,000 containers a year. China produces around 5 million. By most estimates China builds more than 90% of the world’s dry containers, a share that pushed toward 95% during the pandemic scramble, when a single 20-foot box in India briefly cleared ₹4.5 lakh against a normal ₹80,000. CIMC alone is the largest container producer on earth. India makes under 1% of global demand.
That is why a single carrier’s sourcing intent carries weight. Maersk is one of the three largest container operators in the world. When it signals it would rather have boxes from somewhere other than a Chinese port, it is naming a vulnerability every exporter in Tirupur and Ludhiana already lives with.
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India’s answer is the Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced CMAS in the Union Budget 2026-27 on 1 February: ₹10,000 crore over five years, with a target of 1 million TEUs of annual domestic capacity over a decade. The support is built around viability gap funding, capital subsidies, help accessing specialised steel, and testing and certification infrastructure.
The scheme does not stand alone. Bharat Container Shipping Line, India’s new national carrier backed by the Shipping Corporation of India and CONCOR, launched in October 2025 with a planned fleet of 51 vessels. Officials estimate BCSL alone will need close to a million TEUs. That is a domestic demand guarantee sitting underneath the supply-side subsidy the buyer and the cheque both Indian, both committed.
The hard part is steel, not assembly
A dry container is mostly corten steel weathering steel that resists corrosion at sea. Corten runs 60-65% of the total cost of building a box. China did not win this industry by welding faster. It won by rolling cheap corten at enormous scale, right next to the assembly line. India’s corten capacity is thin and, for the right grades, largely absent.
So the ₹10,000 crore lowers the cost of putting up a plant. It does very little about the recurring cost, which is the steel. Governments fund the factory. The factory’s largest bill is the part the budget line doesn’t reach.
What this means for trade and compliance teams
For trade analysts and procurement desks, nothing changes on the next booking. No Indian-made, CSC-certified container is rolling off a line at volume today. What changes is option value. A second credible source of certified boxes, even a modest one, gives Indian shippers a lever on lease rates and a hedge against the next shortage — the kind where Chinese ports set the price and Indian exporters pay it. The things to watch are concrete: the CMAS implementation rules from the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways (eligibility, milestone-based disbursement), and the first Indian line to clear an ISO/CSC audit. Until a box passes that audit, this is a roadmap, not a supply chain.
The demand is already underwritten, so the first plants get built BCSL needs the boxes and the subsidy is tied to making them at home. What decides the pace is corten. Expect the early Indian-made containers to run on imported or part-imported steel, which lets them beat China on delivered freight (no empty-box ocean leg into India) well before they beat China at the factory gate. India can buy its way to a domestic box. Buying its way to a domestic box that is cheaper than a Chinese one is a steel project wearing a container project’s name.
FAQ
Has Maersk actually signed a deal to buy containers from an Indian manufacturer?
No. In its India Maritime Week 2025 statement, Maersk described exploring local manufacturing and procurement of containers from Indian companies, including sharing specifications and quality requirements. There is no named supplier, no volume, and no contract as announced.
What is the Container Manufacturing Assistance Scheme?
CMAS is a ₹10,000 crore, five-year scheme announced in the Union Budget 2026-27 to build a domestic container industry, targeting 1 million TEUs of annual capacity over ten years. It works through viability gap funding, capital subsidies, and support for specialised steel and certification.
Why can’t India simply match China on container cost?
Corten steel is 60-65% of a container’s cost, and China’s advantage is producing that steel cheaply and at scale beside its assembly lines. Until India builds comparable corten capacity, subsidies reduce a plant’s setup cost but not the recurring input cost that actually drives the price gap.