The Hindu Business Line : ‘Domestic container market poised to grow’

The domestic container market is poised for a big growth, says Mr G.K. Mukerjea, Managing Director & CEO, Transafe Services Ltd, a joint venture between Balmer Lawrie and ICICI Ventures.

“In the past one year the growth has been more than 40 per cent thanks to the emergence of several private container train operators and hopefully this trend will persist for some time to come,” Mr Mukerjea said while addressing newspersons here on Tuesday.

Growing Needs

The market for refrigerated (reefer) containers, he felt, was particularly holding out big promise as more and more cold chains were being launched to cater to the growing needs of the economy. The demand for custom built containers for oil exploration, defence and space research and other purposes too was steadily rising, he added.

Transafe Services (formerly Indian Container Leasing Company Ltd), which has been in container manufacturing and leasing business right from its inception in the early nineties, is planning to expand its container manufacturing capacity substantially, from the present around 300 TEUs to about 1,000 TEUs per month and this should be possible with the commissioning of three new units, one each at Kharagpur (West Bengal), Daruhera (Haryana) and Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) by March next.

The estimated cost of setting up the units was Rs 100 crore to be funded partly by internal accruals and partly by debts, he said. The existing units, having limited capacity, are now located at Howrah, Delhi and Coimbatore.

The new units would be manufacturing speciality containers, mostly custom built and suited for rail transportation, and reefer containers.

The units would be under one of the four strategic business units (SBU) of the company Creative Containers, which accounted for more than 40 per cent of the company’s turnover of about Rs 50 crore (2006-07), the other SBUs being leasing business, both domestic and international (30 per cent), and the cold chain logistics and trailer logistics (30 per cent together).

The company posted 100 per cent growth in business to achieve a turnover of Rs 50 crore in 2006-07 and the performance was likely to be repeated to post a turnover of Rs 100 crore in the current fiscal, Mr Mukerjea said.

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