The trains of Concor are running fuller now. Thanks to Concor's special offer to use the shipping lines' containers for transporting cargo of its domestic customers, there has been an improvement in capacity utilisation. This has improved Container Corporation of India's (Concor) margins.
“In the last two years, there were insufficient exports from the hinterland, and imports were higher,” Mr Anil Kumar Gupta, Managing Director, Container Corporation of India (Concor), told Business Line .
This resulted in piling up of containers of shipping lines in the hinterland. In this context, the shipping lines started offering to drop off cargo preferably at ports. Suppose an importer wanted the container to be dropped off at a location in Northern India, the shipping line would instead ask the importer that it would drop off the container at the Western port.
Empty repositioning
Many container train operators
Concor started talking to the shipping lines with its offer to reposition the empty boxes in ports at a lower cost. For instance, say a shipping line wanted a bulk of containers moved to Western ports on a particular date. Concor offered that it would move the containers to the port at some discounted freight charge for the shipping line. But, the discount was in lieu of the shipping line allowing Concor to drop the boxes at the port after some days.
“During those days, we targeted domestic cargo in the port's direction. With this strategy, we were able to increase our domestic throughput. The expenses remained same and earnings went up,” said Mr Gupta.
The empty freight expenses for Concor were around 8 per cent of the total rail freight expenses in 2009-10; they were down to 7.3 per cent of total rail freight expenses in 2010-11.
Rail freight expense is the haulage charge paid by Concor to the Indian Railways.
“This resulted in a benefit of about Rs 16 crore,” Mr Gupta said.
Concor registered a net profit of Rs 201.37 crore in quarter ended March 31, 2011, registering 16.5 per cent growth against the corresponding period last fiscal. The income from operations during the quarter were at Rs 995.37 crore, up 4.7 per cent against corresponding period last fiscal.
The net profit for the fiscal 2011 was Rs 830.09 crore, up 5.5 per cent.
The income from operations were at Rs 3826.58 crore, up 3.26 per cent.