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The Container Corporation of India (Concor) has appealed to the tea trade for patronising the services being provided by its inland container depot (ICD) at Amingaon (Guwahati) to promote domestic movement of tea.
“The shippers may consider movement of direct sales from gardens with road bridging to Amingaon ICD for onward by movement rail through Concor,” said a spokesman for Concor, adding, “ there is a tremendous freight benefit on long lead transportation by rail and domestic tea despatches from Guwahati auction to different locations particularly Kolkata can easily be started through Concor at competitive rates with the additional advantage of safety during transit.” At present, Amingaon ICD handles tea for exports.
“There is a mismatch as we get a lot of inward domestic cargo at Amingaon but hardly any outward traffic”, says, pointing out, “except for a short period in 2007-08 fiscal when the road movement was disrupted, there has not been much movement of domestic tea through Amingaon ICD.”
The spokesman concedes that tea being a seasonal commodity, the cargo inducement, even if the tea trade decides to support the ICD for domestic movement, will be for part of the year. “But it will still be better then the present situation,” he observes.
Target for Amingaon
Meanwhile, the tea workshop held recently at Guwahati to work out the plans for 2011-12 set the target for Amingaon at 3,000 TEUs. In 2010-11, the throughput was 2285 TEUs, against 2954 TEUs in 2009-10. The drop was due to the tea crop loss in Assam caused by incessant rain and the consequent pest attack in April-May-June last year. “We only hope that the last year's situation will not be repeated this year,” the spokesman observes.
Shipping Corporation of India commanded the largest share of 2010-11 shipments, 1135 TEUs (922 TEUs in 2009-10), followed by Maersk, 402 TEUs (282 TEUs), K Line, 357 TEUs (477 TEUs) and APL, 54 TEUs (1214 TEUs) and others 329 TEUs (59 TEUs).
Among the tea shippers, McLeod Russel, as always, topped the list, 1,572 TEUs (2,273 TEUs), followed by Apeejay Tea, 336 TEUs (363 TEUs); M K Shah 224 TEUs (nil); Assam Company 88 TEUs (194 TEUs); Warren Tea 33 TEUs (80 TEUs), and others, 32 TEUs (44 TEUs).
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