The Hindu Business Line : Concor starts moving domestic tea from Amingaon to Kolkata

Kolkata, Sept. 10 For the first time, Container Corporation of India (Concor) has started moving domestic tea between Amingaon inland container depot (ICD) and Kolkata.

Last month, the throughput was around 30 TEUs, likely to nearly double in the current month, according to Concor sources.

The Amingaon ICD-Kolkata route is generally used for transportation of tea for exports through the Kolkata port.

The domestic tea movement on the route has been possible, as the sources explain, due to cargo support provided by two major tea companies, McLeod Russel and Hindustan Unilever. However, Concor is not sure if the traffic will sustain over a long period.

The present cargo inducement, it is felt, may be due to the bad road condition caused by monsoon in the North East.

Once the condition improves, the traffic too will go back to road, it is felt.

After all, for traders, road is generally the preferred mode for transportation of goods to and from that region, mainly on cost consideration.

Availability of empties

However, if the domestic tea traffic stabilises on the route (the tea companies are believed to have given assurance in this regard), Concor may have to think of ways and means to ensure steady availability of domestic empties to be required for the movement of the traffic.

The empties, which are now repositioned at Amingaon ICD, are for exports, not domestic movement.

Concor has so far managed to organise domestic empties to facilitate the tea movement.

About 30 domestic containers, which move every month between Kolkata and Amingaon ICD carrying vegetable oil and other items, have been used for backloading of tea.

Since the requirement is more, it had to organise some empties from other places, even from far off places such as Chennai and Sanathnagar (Andhra Pradesh). Some loaded containers arriving from Moga (Punjab), on destuffing in Guawahati, were also used for tea transportation to Kolkata, it is learnt.

The domestic tea containers are carried in the same rake that carries export tea containers and to that, the space for export containers on the rake gets reduced. However, this has not caused any problem because the volume of exports through the ICD so far has been less than that in the last year.

Till now a total of 670 TEUs of tea for exports moved on the route compared with 769 TEUs in the same period last year.

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