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T.E. Raja Simhan

Chennai, Aug. 29 Chennai is emerging as a key market for material handling equipment (MHE) with a spurt in the number of warehouses and container freight stations (CFS) in and around the city.

There are over 100 large warehouses and a few more are to come up in the next few months, according to sources in the industry.

There are around 15 CFS in and around the city and a few more are expected to come up with Chennai port emerging as a major container handling port. This will, in turn, boost the demand for MHE like fork lifts, pallet trucks, stackers, order picker and reach trucks, officials participating in the ICICI Bank SME Expo Logistics and Material Handling 2008 said.

The event, which ended today, is a two-day international logistics and material handling business expo organised by INIS Enterprises at the Chennai Trade Centre.

Running for the third consecutive year, nearly 50 companies, including Godrej & Boyce, Jost’s and Forklifters, participated in the expo to showcase creative material handling solutions, information of products and services by many MHE/service providers. With over 2,000 visitors, the event provided insights on the latest in-plant logistics and materials handling technologies.

The Indian MHE market has been pegged at over Rs 5,000 crore with Larsen & Toubro and Godrej as major players. There is no data on Chennai alone, the sources said.

The Indian MHE industry is expected to grow steadily. The improvement in the Indian economy will result in accelerated demand for goods movement and create opportunities for suppliers of goods-handling products and services of all types. The need for MHE is directly related to the amount of cargo and freight traffic. India will see a major pull in the demand for these equipments, says a report.

The MHEs help to have a better inventory control, faster throughput, less time for changeover, fewer defects during material handling and better utilisation of space, according to a Conference Paper on SMEs in Logistics: Bringing Value to the Changing Indian Landscape. The paper prepared by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt Ltd was released at the expo.

The global MHE industry is estimated to be Rs 3.75 lakh crore in 2005 and projected to be Rs 4.68 lakh crore by 2010. The growth is being led by developing countries such as India, China, Turkey Mexico and Russia. While the US, Germany and Russia are world’s largest producers of MHE, Germany and Japan are exporters of MHE. China will become an important global supplier in coming years, the report says.

More Stories on : Infrastructure | Events | Tamil Nadu

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