Container Corporation of India (Concor) will spend ₹6,000-8,000 crore over five years to develop infrastructure, buy equipment and strengthen IT-enabled systems, according to its Chairman and Managing Director V Kalyana Rama.

The capex plan for the next five years will be on the same lines as that of the past five years. However, since Concor has major plans to expand its warehousing spaces, investment will be higher, with nearly ₹8,000 crore instead of ₹6,000 crore, he told newspersons on the sidelines of the two-day CII South India Port Conclave.

Funding will be through internal accruals. Concor is a zero debt company, he said.

Concor plans to increase warehousing space by more than three times to nearly 15 million sq ft over three-four years from the present 4 million sq ft. It is developing nine facilities on the East coast. There is a plan to expand the number of warehouses to 100 by 2020 from the present 72 with all gateways connected. “Our endeavour is to evacuate as much as possible by rail,” Kalyana Rama said at the seminar.

He further said the US has warehousing space of nearly 4.5 billion sq ft while India has around 1.1 billion sq ft. However, post GST, there will be a huge demand for warehousing space, and Concor is creating such facilities, he added. In three places, Concor is constructing warehouses in parcel size between 280 acres and 400 acres.

Concor is working on an inter-modal transport system to reduce logistics costs, and is in talk with various stakeholders, he said. However, the main focus is on IT-enabled systems, which will be critical in the total supply chain, he added.

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