• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

Stocks

• Quotes
• SE Diary
• Scoreboard
• Open-End Mutual Fund

Port Info

• Ships in Ports
  
  

Archives

• Yesterday
• Datewise
• Resources

Group Sites

• The Hindu
• Business Line
• The Sportstar
• Frontline
• The Hindu eBooks
• The Hindu Images

Ashwini Phadnis

SriLankan, with one of the widest cargo networks in India, is hoping to bag a big share of the proposed growth in freight volumes in the country.

SRILANKAN is excited and looking forward to a fair share of the increased volume of cargo movement to and from India.

"Every airline operator is predicting a growth in air cargo and with SriLankan having the largest network in India we are excited and looking forward to a fair share from this increased volume. The large network here provides an opportunity to associate with our freight forwarding community and export customers at the national level. Apart from this it also helps in providing the best solutions to the Indian manufacturing industry," Cargo Manager, India, Mr D.V. Madhavan said.

The proximity of the airline's `Hub in the Ocean' to India, which according to Mr Madhavan "can be virtually treated as the external hub of India", also allows the airline to provide logistics solutions to overseas customers in reaching their shipments to almost all parts of India. At present, the airline connects with 10 Indian cities including Bangalore, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Trichy, New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Coimbatore.

India contributes 21 per cent in terms of tonnage and 19 per cent in terms of revenue to the airline's cargo operations.

Further, during 2004-05, there was an increase of 35 per cent in cargo carriage over the last financial year. "There has been positive growth and hopefully this will continue," senior airline officials said.

The airline's cargo centre at the Bandaranaike International Airport also handles cargo of all other airlines that use this airport.

Though the cargo centre has a designed capacity of approximately 125,000 tonnes, it handled an all-time high 146,883 metric tonnes of cargo during 2004, outdoing its earlier record of 127,116 tonnes notched up in 2000. Incidentally, the record for the most amount of cargo handled in a month — 12,078 tonnes in March 2003 — was broken no less than seven times in 2004, the highest being in October, at 13,949 tonnes.

This has already been outdone twice this year, and the new high is 14,597 tonnes, achieved this January.

SriLankan Cargo carries almost anything that does not have a restriction or ban by the authorities or which cannot be carried due to its nature, size or weight. Among others things, it carries general cargo, perishables, live animals and valuables.

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

Stories in this Section
SriLankan upbeat on India's growing air cargo potential

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line