Southeast Asia · Case study

Port of Tanjung Pelepas, Inaugural Green Sukuk

Johor, MalaysiaAugust 2025

In August 2025, the Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP), a container terminal operated as a joint venture between Malaysia based MMC Group and Netherlands based APM Terminals, issued an inaugural Green Sukuk for RM 500 million to refinance spending on electrified quay cranes and electrified rubber tyred gantries (Port of Tanjung Pelepas, 2025).

The issuance was structured with equal splits across three year and five year tenors, and was significantly oversubscribed. The sukuk was issued under the PTP Sustainability Sukuk Framework, which aligns with the Securities Commission Malaysia SRI Sukuk Framework, the ASEAN Green Bond Standards and the ICMA Green Bond Principles. MARC Solutions gave the framework a Gold assessment (MARC Solutions, 2025).

Separately, PTP described a medium-term capacity target of 15.9 million TEU as part of its wider investment plans (Port of Tanjung Pelepas, 2025). All proceeds reimbursed capital spending from September 2022 to December 2024 on electrified quay cranes and electrified rubber tyred gantries, under the clean transportation category (Port of Tanjung Pelepas, 2026). PTP estimates (issuer estimate, not independently verified) annual avoided emissions of 34.2 tCO2e for the electrified quay cranes and 296.5 tCO2e for the electrified rubber tyred gantries (Port of Tanjung Pelepas, 2026).

The PTP Green Sukuk demonstrates the application of Islamic finance principles to port green infrastructure investment. The transaction provides a financing model that port operators in Muslim majority ASEAN member countries, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei Darussalam, may apply to access the global Islamic green finance market.

Transferability

For other ASEAN ports, the PTP transaction demonstrates how green Sukuk can finance significant infrastructure modernization while maintaining alignment with Islamic finance standards and leveraging investor demand for sustainability labeled fixed income securities.

The transaction model is applicable to port authorities in Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, and other ASEAN member countries with substantial Islamic investor bases and may be adapted for both greenfield and brownfield port modernization projects.

Sources

All information used for this case study was based on publicly available resources.