India moved 1 million tonnes of cargo through the Port of Montreal in 2025, making it the port's second-largest trading market — and the Montreal Port Authority has just renewed its collaboration agreement with India's Adani Group to push that volume higher.

Captain Sandeep Mehta signed for the Adani Group and Marie-Claude Galarneau, Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating and Transformation Officer of the MPA, countersigned in Mumbai, with Canadian Minister of International Trade Maninder Sidhu present. The signing took place during Team Canada's trade mission to India.

The renewal extends a partnership that began with a first collaboration agreement in 2018. Seven years on, the trade balance at Montreal leans toward Canada: 60 percent of the 1 million tonnes moves as exports, 40 percent as imports.

What does the renewed agreement cover?

The deal concentrates on four operational fronts:

• Developing trade through the Mundra-Montreal maritime corridor, linking Adani's flagship western Indian port hub directly to the St. Lawrence gateway
• Joint promotion and information sharing to identify new business opportunities
• Exchanging port and technological expertise to improve operations and road and rail transportation fluidity
• Exploring new areas of collaboration, including vehicle transportation

The corridor language matters for carriers and forwarders. Mundra is India's largest commercial port, operated by Adani Ports and SEZ, and anchoring Montreal's India strategy to a single named gateway gives shipping lines a defined lane around which to plan capacity — though the agreement itself binds no tonnage and sets no service commitments.

Alongside the renewal, the MPA has appointed Prakash Tulsiani as its new agent in India, a role focused on engaging shipping lines, freight forwarders and importing and exporting companies, and raising awareness of business development opportunities between the two countries.

Which commodities are in play?

The trade is far from one-note. On the import side, Montreal handles food products, ceramic products and plastics from India. Exports run the other way in forestry and metal products — a mix that reflects Canada's resource-heavy export profile and India's manufacturing base.

For shippers in those categories, a formalized Montreal-Mundra relationship could translate over time into smoother port coordination and better road and rail fluidity at both ends — two of the agreement's explicit targets. What it will not do, on paper, is alter rates or add services by itself; those outcomes depend on carriers acting on the corridor.

Why Montreal is betting on India now

The macro backdrop is doing some of the argument's work. The IMF projects India will become the world's fourth-largest economy by 2027 to 2028, and Ottawa is negotiating a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with India — a treaty that, if concluded, would materially expand the cargo base the corridor agreement anticipates.

MPA President and CEO Paul Bird called India a major trading partner and said the port aims to strengthen Montreal's role as "a strategic gateway between India and the economic heart of North America." That ambition is real but unproven; second place among Montreal's markets still means India trails the port's top market, the United States, by a wide margin.

Minister Sidhu, for his part, highlighted the chance for Canadian businesses to reach one of the world's fastest-growing economies, noting progress toward the trade pact with India.

The MPA frames the initiative as trade diversification and supply chain resilience in a changing global trade environment — language that acknowledges, without saying so directly, the pressure Canada's gateways face from tariff uncertainty on the US route.

Whether the renewed pact moves tonnage beyond the 1-million-tonne mark will depend on carrier appetite for the Mundra-Montreal lane and on Ottawa closing the trade agreement that would give the corridor its commercial payload.