The Hindu Business Line : JNPT congestion: Concor plans to move boxes by road to Dronagiri

According to one estimate, in various ICDs in the National Capital Region, more than 3,500 export containers are awaiting to be transported to the JNPT terminals.

Santanu Sanyal

Kolkata, June 9 Beleagured by the steady piling up of import containers, as much as 12,000 boxes at present, at the three terminals of the Jawaharlal Nehru port, Container Corporation of India (Concor) is mulling an emergency arrangement to partly reduce the congestion. The accumulation has been caused by disruption in rail movement between North India and the JN port due to Gujjar agitation in Rajasthan.

The arrangement presupposes evacuation of an estimated 1,500-2000 boxes by road from NSICT and GTIPL terminals of the port to Concor’s Dronagiri terminal (DRT) located a few miles away and from there transportation of the boxes by rail to different inland container depots (ICDs) mostly located in north India but some located in other parts such as Hyderabad. More than 50 per cent of the accumulated containers at the JN port are for the northern region.

No extra cost

“Although the emergency arrangement presupposes additional handling involving part road movement, unloading of boxes from trucks and again reloading them on rail flats at DRT, Concor will not charge anything extra for it”, Mr Yash Vardhan, Director (International Marketing & Operations), Concor, told Business Line.

Pendency problem

“We will continue to charge the same rates as we presently charge for loading the boxes right at NSICT and GTIPL terminals. With accumulation of boxes, known as pendency problem, rising at JNPT terminals due to the agitation in Rajasthan and with the monsoon already breaking in Mumbai, Concor had no other option but to devise some alternative arrangement to tackle the problem, he observed.

Concor and the private container train operators together can handle the normal accumulation of 5,000-6,000 boxes in the JN port’s terminals, say shipping lines, pointing out that the accumulation of additional 6,000-7,000 boxes will mean three additional rakes will have to be placed everyday at least for a month to clear the backlog. Is that really possible in the present situation? The lines and the shippers wonder.

Delay in movement

Meanwhile, the slow evacuation of import boxes out of JNPT terminals has also slowed down the arrivals of export boxes at the terminals from different ICDs.

According to one estimate, in various ICDs in the National Capital Region, more than 3,500 export containers are awaiting to be transported to the JNPT terminals.

Interestingly, Hyderabad does not fall on the route hit by agitation and yet there delays in JNPT in clearing Hyderabad bound imports, it is learnt.

The pendency problem at the JN port is nothing new. The problem became acute even a few years ago.

At that time, there were talks about running container trains between North India and Visakhapatnam port, having a modern container terminal, to route through the port both import and export containers to and from the Far East.

But the problem cited at that time was the absence of regular container train services to link Visakhaptnam port’s container terminal.

Right now, a private container train operator runs regular services on the route, hoping that some shipping lines offering sailings to and from Far East via the JN port and facing congestion problem there will switch over to Visakhaptnam port but nothing has happened as yet for reasons best known to the lines.

More Stories on : Shipping | Supply Chain Management

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Govt set to clear 3 minor greenfield airport projects in Karnataka

Finance Ministry reviewing road, port projects bidding norms

JNPT congestion: Concor plans to move boxes by road to Dronagiri

Port, dock workers demand early action on Jain panel report

UB group may offer stake in airline biz to raise funds