The Hindu Business Line : Concor to offer block train booking for shipping lines

CONTAINER Corporation of India (Concor) has offered to run block trains between Delhi and Visakhapatnam port's container terminal and hopes to receive an encouraging response from the shipping lines.

Under the block train system, Concor, instead of piecemeal booking of containers, will offer the entire train for booking to the shipping line which, either singly or jointly, can book it and in turn offer slots to individual traders.

It might be noted that since October, Concor has been running two trains a week between Delhi and Visakhapatnam port's container terminal. The throughput of the terminal so far has been 10,837 TEUs, comprising 6,767 TEUs of imports and 4,070 TEUs of exports.

Visakha Container Terminal Pvt Ltd (VCTPL), the joint venture between DP World of Dubai and United Liner Agencies Pvt Ltd belonging to J M Baxi Group that runs the terminal, hopes to surpass the target set for the current year.

The optimism is based on the fact that Concor has agreed to offer regular and reliable services between its inland container depot (ICD) at Raipur (Chhattisgarh) and Visakhapatnam port's container terminal. Concor has also offered its yard space in the ICD Raipur for use by trade as well as shipping lines to reposition empties and other purposes.

It has even offered to move exports by domestic containers to Visakhapatnam port for re-stuffing in exim containers, thus benefiting the Raipur-based shippers who will not be required to wait for the exim containers to arrive at the Raipur ICD.

At a trade meet held at Raipur on Monday, the officials of VCTPL explained to the local shippers the benefit of utilising Visakhapatnam port's container terminal to route their imports and exports. Senior officials of Concor, CII, Raipur and a cross section of the shipping lines such as Shipping Corporation of India, K Line, Hapag Lloyd, Maersk Line, Dongnama, Transworld Group, Saturn Shipping, Jalan Shipping & Logistics, among others, were present.

The trade interests represented various sectors such as sponge iron, foundries, heavy melting scrap, finished steel, castings, rice and rice seeds and spices.

It might be noted that at the initiative of the Commissioner of Customs and Central Excise, Raipur, the authorities concerned in Delhi has extended the benefits of all relevant schemes to cover shipments to and from Raipur ICD.