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Mamuni Das

New Delhi, Oct 3

Associated Container Terminals Ltd (ACTL) has upgraded its road-linked inland container depot (ICD) in Faridabad (one of Delhi’s satellite towns) to a rail-linked depot. With this, it aims to provide ICD facilities to those new/private container train operators who would like to use the Tughlakabad container depot of Container Corporation of India (Concor).

Private container operators have been unable to use Concor’s Tughlakabad container depot as they find the access conditions set by Concor too stringent.

The Tughlakabad container depot handles about 35,000 20-feet equivalent unit (TEU) containers a month, while ACTL claims its facility can handle about 13,000 TEUs a month. TEU is a standard unit used for measuring container sizes.

Till ACTL built its rail siding with an incremental cost of about Rs 30 crore, its facility primarily served as a road bridging ICD for boxes that were handled at the Tughlakabad depot.

ACTL has entered into agreements with four private train operators — CRRS (Dubai Ports), IILPL (APL), ETA (Al Ghurair Group Dubai), and Boxtrans (JM Baxi). “This will result in a daily container rail service from the depot to JNPT, twice a week to Mundra and twice a week to Pipavav,” said Mr Arun Kachru, Chief Executive Officer, ACTL.

ACTL claims that its ICD will save the container train operators about 10-12 hours for the services offered between the Jawaharlal Nehru port and some of the other rail-linked container depots in the National Capital Region (NCR) such as Loni (owned by Central Warehouse Corporation and operated by World’s Window Terminals), Garhi Harsaru (jointly owned by Concor and Gateway Ditriparks) and Patli (owned by Adani).

“Financially, this will result in savings of Rs 800-1,000 a TEU to the container train operators,” Mr Kachru said.

Industry observers point out that each ICD has its own cargo catchment area and this facility will attract the cargo from the Faridabad region – which is in the range of 5,000 TEU a month.

Moreover, when the Rewari-Ringus gauge conversion gets completed (which could happen during the next six months), ICDs at Garhi-Harsaru and Patli would provide relatively faster access to the western ports.

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