Terry O’Connor beams with the air of a proud parent at the 17 hectares of freshly reclaimed land lying fallow. The chief executive of the port of Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory has been handed the job of overseeing the ambitious expansion plans of China’s Landbridge Group, which in October paid A$506m (US$368m) for a 99-year lease to operate and develop the facility.

If all goes to schedule, the barren land will soon be a riot of construction activity as the port’s wharf space is doubled to accommodate larger vessels and more refrigerated capacity, bolstering trade links in a largely overlooked corner of Australia.

“We will have to triple, at least, our activity to justify the expansion,” Mr O’Connor says. “We are building in anticipation of demand, rather than as a response.”