The Hindu Business Line : Tea shipments via Amingaon ICD to turn costlier

Kolkata, April 7 Tea shipments through Amingaon (Guwahati) inland container depot (ICD) will cost more this tea season due to start in north India shortly.

This follows the Container Corporation of India’s (Concor) decision to hike terminal charges and freight rates, for both empties and loaded boxes, for shipments through the ICD.

New rates

Addressing the tea workshop held at Shillong recently, Mr A.K. Behera, Chief General Manager, Concor, Eastern region, announced that the freight rates would rise by Rs 500 for a TEU and Rs 1,000/FEU and the terminal charges by Rs 400/TEU and Rs 800/FEU. The freight for one-way movement of an empty would be up by Rs 200 and of a loaded box by Rs 300.

The new rates following the revision thus would be as follows: Rs 8,950/TEU for one-way movement of an empty and Rs 13,300/TEU for a loaded box. The corresponding figures for a forty-footer (FEU) will be Rs 16,650 (for an empty) and Rs 26,600 (for a loaded box).

‘Revision overdue’

Defending the decision to hike freight rates and terminal charges, Mr Behera said the revision was overdue as there had been no revisions in past two years. During this period, the Indian Railways hiked the haulage charges and doubled the lease rental charges, entailing higher cost of operations for Concor. However, Concor had so far refrained from passing on the burden of these hikes to the trade.

Finally, Concor was investing over Rs 3 crore on expanding the capacity of the Amingaon terminal and modernising its facilities for the benefit of the users.

Freight subsidy sought

A section of the tea exporters present at the workshop reacted sharply to the announcement saying since there was no proposal for freight hike in the Rail Budget for 2008-09, Concor also should not effect any hike in freight and terminal charges.

Some of them even demanded freight subsidy on shipments through Amingaon ICD following the Railway Minister’s announcement to grant freight subsidy on exports from the North East.

Mr Yash Vardhan, Director (International Marketing & Operations), Concor, said granting of freight subsidy might be considered only if the Indian Railways agreed to extend similar facility to Concor.

Imported containers

The issue of inadequate arrivals of imported containers at the Amingaon terminal also came up for review. This created a mismatch with the result the shipping lines were being required to reposition the empties at a cost borne by the shippers. Several suggestions were mooted as to how to tackle this problem but it was conceded that not all the containers that arrived at Kolkata port with imports could be sent to Amingaon for loading tea, more so when there was no fumigation facility at Amingaon.

Concor, Mr Vardhan said, would undertake a study of the imported traffic unloaded at Kolkata port but transported to the North East by road to examine how much of it could be diverted to transportation by rail.

SCI services

Mr S.G. Thawani, Regional Director of Shipping Corporation of India, emphasised the need for larger and more consistent participation of the foreign shipping lines in Amingaon shipments. SCI, as he pointed out, had been the single largest transporter of the traffic through the ICD but the national carrier was now facing problems. While SCI offered services mainly to the UK/Continent, the ICD shipments to the UK/Continent were dropping – from around 79 per cent of the total five years ago to around 39 per cent now.

Side by side the shipments to the UAE were increasing. The problem in offering services to the UAE was that the cargo inducement for the return journey was negligible. The participation of the foreign lines in ICD shipments on the other hand, as he indicated, varied from year to year.

For 2007-08 tea shipments through Amingaon ICD, Concor’s best shipper trophy went to Hindustan Unilever, and second best to McLeod Russel while the best shipping line trophy to Shipping Corporation of India and second best to Maersk Line.