When the makers of The Sopranos, the American television series, needed to portray the windswept New Jersey waterfront at its most grungy, industrial and dystopian, they turned to the Global Container Terminal, 100 acres of orange, grey and blue shipping containers sprawled along a cul-de-sac off the state turnpike.

Looking at the facility, it is easy to picture it as a backdrop for dark meditations on the psychology of organised crime – but hard to fathom that it is today the most attractive investment of its type in the world. The terminal has fetched the highest valuation in a spate of deals over the past 18 months in which ports, toll roads, airports and other infrastructure have changed hands at rapidly escalating prices.