Having seen a sharp spurt in number of Direct Port Delivery (DPD) clients, JN Port is looking for a planning and design solution to stack containers in the most efficient way. DPD clients are those that get customs clearance in advance and do not need to wait for long at the port for direct access to the major port.

The port has seen a sharp rise in DPD clients, with number of clients reaching 1000, accounting for almost 57 per cent of JN Port’s import cargo, and 30 per cent of import containers. The sharp spurt happened after the upper limits for container handling volumes were lowered for customers.

CFS model JN Port was designed for the container freight station (CFS) model, where the port’s customers could hold their cargo and till they get a green flag from customs, while the DPD model is one where the clients can directly access the major port, without having to wait for the Customs clearance.

“For us the problem to solve is how 1,000 clients can be catered by reducing the heaps of containers. I have to aggregate certain DPD clients. Otherwise, containers will spread horizontally,” Neeraj Bansal, Deputy Chairman, JN Port, told BusinessLine , adding that they were looking for a planning and design solution.

Stacking containers on a client basis means that JN Port is unable to use the vertical space – as there are some DPD clients with one-two containers, and some with 100 containers. Earlier, JN Port used to stack the containers for over 70 locations -- 33 container freight stations (CFS) and 40 inland container depots (ICDs).

“The spurt in list of clients who could access DPD facility happened January 2017 onwards, when JN Port Trust started reducing the ceiling of minimum containers to be handled at JN Port terminals,” Bansal, said.

Now, to ensure that they can deliver a container quickly when a truck trailer comes to the yard, JN Port has to stack containers in its yard on a client-wise basis – which becomes 1073 if one were to include the 1000 odd DPD clients, 33 CFSs and 40 ICDs.

“Before January, hardly 30-40 customers used to get DPD facility, because we had a limit that DPD would be extended only to those clients who handled 300 containers across terminals in a month. This was done with an aim to esnure that people with higher volumes can be identified as a little CFS, where as smaller imports can go to CFSs,” Bansal, adding now they have certain clients with 1-2 containers.

DPD is not a rocket science as globally most of the ports are doing DPD. But, when it comes to JN Port, it is a rocket science. “That is the re-engineering we are doing – so that when the tractor trailer comes, we can give faster delivery of the container,” he said.

But implementation of DPD is also creating its own challenges. “The out of charge order for these clients of these containers have to come very early. Only then, DPD makes sense. Otherwise, if I start doing the same work that CFS were doing in the terminal yard, then what is the benefit to the trade,” asked Bansal.

Despite these challenges, Bansal insists there is no congestion at the port, citing multiple studies including a customer survey report by Prof. G Raghuram, Dean of IIM, Bangalore, which states that three-fourth of JN Port’s customers have said they are “extremely satisfied” with the reforms, apart from the time-study reports of port operations undertaken by Federation of Indian Export Organisation and RFID-based container tracking report by Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation.

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