An annual award given to meritorious professionals from Maritime, Shipping and Port Industries to recognise their contributions to EXIM Trade of Tamil Nadu, India and Globe.
Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Thiru M.K. Stalin gave away the award in the presence of Hon’ble Minister for Industries and Tamil Official Language, Thiru Thangam Thennarasu along with the Sr. Officials of Tamil Nadu.
Ennarasu is a Mechanical Engineer with more than 33 years of leadership in the maritime and ports sector, having held prominent Chief Executive Level posts at ports and terminals in Asia and the Indian Subcontinent as well Indian Ports of Mumbai Port Authority, Chennai Port Authorities’ owned Container Terminal. He currently serves as an advisor to Indian Ports. With a Master’s Degree in Management from the University of Mumbai, Ennarasu has a wide range of management experience in ports, container terminals, freight stations and inland container depots, as well as integrated end-to-end supply chain logistics. He introduced innovative port technologies and developed maritime infrastructure with safe & sustainable operations.
He has experience working for the Indian government, namely the Port Authority of Mumbai, in the late nineteen eighties. With two spells in Malaysia from 1996 onwards, he played a key role in establishing the renowned Westport Container Terminals in Port Klang, Malaysia as its General Manager of operations and then as CEO (2001 – 2004). Following success there he returned to India and occupied several senior posts including Director & Chief Executive Officer, Chennai Container Terminal Ltd.(CCT), Dubai Ports World (2004 – 2015) and Joint President and CEO of the Mundra Port, Gujarat, India (2015 – 2019). At Mundra Port he oversaw the exponential increase in capacity to 250 million tons, which is the largest port in India.
He was also actively involved in setting up and commisioning of Container Terminal in Kamarajar Port at Ennore. Notably, during his service as CEO at Chennai Container Terminal for about 10 years, he spearheaded the major projects for Southern India EXIM Trade, implemented the Ennore Manali Road connectivity to Chennai Port for seamless movement of Containers and technological solutions for Container Operations, raised the perfromance to Global Standards by adopting global ports experience to Tamilnadu and Indian EXIM industries. Especially for automobile and car manufacturing companies benefited with the JIT- JUST IN TIME movement of containers for enabling Chennai as Deteriot of Asia, exporting more than a million cars to global countries.
He was instrumental in transforming India’s Container EXIM trade to double its growth in 18 years and received more than 25 awards for his seamless service to the EXIM Trade of India and Tamilnadu. He has been recently appointed a IAPH’s (International Association for Ports & Harbours, Tokyo) First Regional Director to India. An annual award of Kappalottiya Thamizhan V.O.C. with a cash prize of ₹5 lakh, a gold medal and a citation would be part of the award. This award will surely motivate Shri Ennarasu Karunesan to contributing Tamilnadu CM’s vision of making TN into One Trillion Dollar economy by 2030.
