The Hindu Business Line : Agents unhappy with poor facilities at Concor ICD

THE inadequate container handling infrastructure at the Inland Container Depot (ICD) under the custodianship of the Container Corporation of India (Concor) here has left the Coimbatore-based steamer agents and custom house agents (CHAs) using the depot high and dry.

The shipping agents and the CHAs complain that the gaps in the ground handling infrastructure have of late caused inordinate delay in clearing their inward and outbound shipment to and from the Concor depot that are to be moved between Coimbatore and the gateway ports of Chennai, Kochi and Tuticorin.

The container hold-ups booked through the depot have particularly worsened after the withdrawal of the heavy-duty reach-stacker, the key ground handling equipment a month ago by the contractors, Vickram Integrated Logistics (Pvt) Ltd, say the members of the Coimbatore Custom House/Steamer Agents Association (CCHSAA).

The association blames that high turnaround time at the ICD suffered by their containers - both stuffed and empty - was contributed by the removal of the 45-tonne capacity reach-stacker by the contractor that led to their export cargo often missing the sail from the designated sea ports in recent weeks.

The reach-stacker was replaced with a 25-tonne tyre-mounted sling crane which, the ICD users say is outmoded and takes more than an hour for a single operation as against 5-10 minutes of operating time taken earlier.

This has forced further congestion at the depot.

The road transporter engaged by Concor to move the containers by road to the ports or bringing the empty containers for stuffing at the depot too became unreliable as frequent break-downs of the trailer-trucks or the inadequate number of the trailer-fitted trucks under the transporter's disposal caused delay in getting the empty containers ferried, the shipping agents say.

On querying about the developments involving the pull-out of the reach-stacker, the Concor ICD sources maintain that the Bangalore-based logistic providers contracted for the container handling had to remove the reach-stacker for routine maintenance and repair works and this would take another two or three months.

The contractor, the sources said, would be restoring the reach-stacker after the routine servicing.

But the association members say they were highly sceptical about the restoration of the equipment considering the fact that the four-year tenure of the contract for Vickram Integrated Logistics with the Concor's Coimbatore ICD was already over and in the face of doubts over whether Concor would renew or extend the contract, it is highly unlikely that the reach-stacker would be brought back to the depot. According to insiders, the logistics company, who are also the equipment handling agency for the Concor in Bangalore Whitefield ICD and Thondaiyarpet Container Freight Station at Chennai, had sought to withdraw the reach-stacker from Coimbatore on the ground that the hire charges realised for the equipment costing Rs 1.5 crore had proved unremunerative.

And hence it decided to replace it with a low-end outmoded sling crane that operated at lower capacity.

The fear among the depot users has been that the Concor which is all geared to shift the container operations over the next four months or so to a site it has newly acquired in the city's peripheral Irugur village where it is setting up a modern ICD complex may try to carry on its operation with the sling crane till its shifts to its own premises and hence would not bother much on bringing back the reach-stacker.

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