[4] The earliest record of Jakarta as a coastal settlement and port can be traced to the Indianized kingdom of Tarumanagara as early as the fourth century.

In AD 39, King Purnawarman established Sunda Pura as the kingdom's new capital city, located on the northern coast of Java.

[5] Purnawarman left seven memorial stones with inscriptions bearing his name spread across the area, including the present-day Banten and West Java provinces.

The harbour area was renamed Sunda Kelapa, as written in a Hindu monk's lontar manuscripts, which are now located at the Bodleian Library of Oxford University in England, and travel records by Prince Bujangga Manik.

[9] The port is part of the Maritime Silk Road, which runs from the Chinese coast via the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean and then to the Upper Adriatic region of Trieste, where there are further rail connections to Central and Eastern Europe.

[14][15] In April 2011, JICT received an Asian Freight and Supply Chain Award (AFSCA) for the best service quality and technology innovation of terminals with less than 4 million twenty-foot equivalent units of handling capacity.

The port will also be able to facilitate triple-E class container ships (with an 18,000 TEU capacity) in a 300-metre-wide (980 ft) two-way sea lane.

A joint venture between state-run port operator Pelindo II and a Japan-Singapore consortium handled the project under PT New Priok Container Terminal 1 (NPCT1).