Category Archives: International

The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) says that it is coordinating with state governments to ensure the supply of medical equipment and related essential items needed for protection against and testing of COVID-19. The senior officials of the Ministry coordinate with supply agencies for providing required material which can be further transported to the desired destinations, based on the requirements received from various states on urgent basis. Air India and Alliance Air flights are being operated to carry out the necessary supply operations across the country. Agencies authorised by MoCA to carry shipment on these flights contact the concerned officials of their region and coordinate for timely delivery/ receipt of shipments. In order to cater to eastern and north eastern parts of the country, an Alliance Air flight from Delhi to Kolkata carried shipments for Kolkata, Guwahati, Dibrugarh and Agartala on March 29, 2020. In northern region, IAF flight from Delhi to Chandigarh to Leh carried ICMR VTM kits and other essential cargo. Alliance Air transferred Pune shipment to Mumbai on Air India flight. Flights on Mumbai -Delhi-Hyderabad-Chennai-Mumbai and Hyderabad-Coimbatore route carried and transported ICMR kits of Shimla, Rishikesh, Lucknow and Imphal from Pune to Delhi. ICMR kits were carried to Chennai. A consignment of Hyderabad was delivered. Consignments of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry were also delivered. A consignment of Ministry of Textiles was moved to Coimbatore. The information sharing, answering of queries and the work at ground is going on round the clock for delivering the supplies to the destinations in a timely manner so the efforts to fight the COVID-19 are multiplied and supplemented.

In line with the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s (MoCA) Krishi Udan Scheme, GMR Hyderabad International Airport (GHIAL) has signed a tri-partite MoU with SpiceJet and Ras-Al-Khaimah International Airport (RKT), UAE. The MoU aims at promoting export of agricultural products from India to UAE and neighbouring countries via Hyderabad. As part of this initiative, Hyderabad Airport has collaborated with Spicejet and Ras-Al-Khaimah International Airport to create a dedicated freight corridor to leverage the tremendous agro and farming sector potential from centrally located Telangana and the neighboring regions. The target market for this endeavour includes Dubai, Abudhabi, Sharjah and Bahrain. Specially designed equipment will be used for transportation of goods through the dedicated freighter aircraft of SpiceJet. SGK Kishore, CEO, GMR Hyderabad International Airport, said, “Through this endeavour, we are also collaborating with farmer associations towards enabling a perennial supply of farm products through a dedicated freighter corridor. This MoU will create a robust platform to harness our agricultural markets and help create an entire ecosystem for exporting perishable agro products from Hyderabad.”

Maersk has started end-to-end cold chain logistics solution for exporters shipping grapes from Nashik and Sangli to North Europe. With this service, Maersk offers end-to-end cold chain logistics solution for grapes’ exporters from Nashik and Sangli thus improving the overall turnaround time into North Europe by four days. Steve Felder, Managing Director – South Asia, Maersk, said “Nashik is a priority market for the exports of grapes from India. With our end-to-end cold chain solutions, we aim to enable the exporters to take their grapes from Nashik to North Europe with a fast turn-around time, and with more simplicity.”

Aiming to reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) for fleet owners, provide better control over operations and increased protection against fraud, Shell has launched Shell Fuels, Shell Fleet Prepaid program and Shell Telematics. Parminder Kohli, GM – Business Development, Marketing and Operations for Fleet Solutions, Shell, said, “Our mission is to be our customers’ first choice for sustainable mobility solutions. We would like to achieve this through understanding their fleet management problems and then providing customised solutions addressing their pain points.”

A 24×7 customs clearance facility will be available at all seaports and airports till May 2020, to facilitate faster clearance of consignments to and from China once coronavirus diminishes. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has written to all Chief Commissioners (Customs and Central Tax) asking them to immediately workout the arrangement and deployment of sufficient number of officers on 24×7 basis at sea ports, air cargo stations, Inland Container Depot (ICDs) and Container Freight Station (CFSs), etc falling in their jurisdiction to tackle any incipient instance of congestion/surge.

The Port of Antwerp and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to establish the JNPT-Antwerp Port Training & Consultancy Foundation as the ‘Port & Logistics Training Centre of Excellence’. This will enable the Centre to offer industry relevant courses with practical implications in the future. The MoU was signed by Sanjay Sethi, IAS, Chairman, JNPT, and Kristof Waterschoot, Managing Director, APEC. The first course on ‘Handling of Dangerous Goods’ was conducted at the Centre last week by Kurt Van Passen, an expert of the Port of Antwerp, together with Babette Desfossez, Belgium Customs Attaché. The facility will now be a Centre of Excellence for the maritime sector in India, for Indian and international port and logistics professionals, it was highlighted. Sethi stressed that the JNPT-APEC Training Centre has been hugely beneficial and that the Centre of Excellence will be enhanced in scale and scope to play a nodal role for all kinds of training and intellectual exchange, with a wide range of programmes. The Centre has the potential to become a very significant institution which all stakeholders can become part of, he added.

Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) is likely to start coastal shipping services in the country’s eastern coast, linking Chennai Port with Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka. The eastern coast service will be run with two ships hired by Vishwa Samudra from the market. The 10-year contract deploys two coastal ships capable of carrying as much as 700 twenty-foot equivalent units with maximum gross weight of 21,000 tonnes (cargo plus container weight). The company had picked Vishwa Samudra to launch the Western coast service last year through a tender, seeking to benefit from the impetus given by the government to the waterway mode to decongest road and rail. Bangladesh’s booming economy has earned it the status as the fastest-growing economy in the Eastern hemisphere. The country’s GDP grew by 8.1 per cent in 2019 and is forecast to expand by 8 per cent this year also, according to the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB).

To develop logistics parks in key consumption hubs in India, Allcargo Logistics has partnered with Blackstone Group. Blackstone will invest up to Rs380 crore in Allcargo Logistics to develop industrial and logistics parks across India. Blackstone proposes to make its investment in the platform, by way of debt and equity. Allcargo will retain a minority stake in the various logistics assets and transfer its debt as it relates to these specific assets to their relevant subsidiaries. The transaction is expected to conclude in a phase wise manner over the next 12 months, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions and achievement of certain milestones. “Through this strategic tie-up, we reiterate our commitment and positioning to create a global benchmark in warehousing infrastructure and provide state-of-the-art warehousing solutions to our customers,” states Shashi Kiran Shetty, Chairman, Allcargo Logistics.

Tensions between Iran and the US increased after an American drone strike that killed top Iranian General last week. Iran is a key trading partner of India. “Escalation of tension between the US and Iran will have implications on India’s exports to the Persian Gulf nation, said, Sharad Kumar Saraf, President, FIEO. He said that due to existing trade sanctions on Iran, Iranian shipping lines are only taking Indian consignments to that country. Iran’s major exports to India are oil, fertilisers and chemicals, while it imports cereals, tea, coffee, basmati rice, spices and organic chemicals, among others. FIEO Chief is also of the view that Iran holds huge export opportunities in sectors such as agriculture, chemicals, machinery, pharmaceuticals, paper and paper products, man-made fibre and filament yarn and essential oils.

The MCCI Logistics Forum 2019 emphasised on regular communication between importers of Nepal and the service providers in India to bring down logistics cost. Sudip Dey, Vice Chairman, Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations in India (FFFAI), suggests, “There must be regular interactions between the importers of Nepal and Kolkata Service providers to bring down cost of Nepal import. It was only due to lack of communication that anomalies were happening (e.g. port ground rent, penalty by Railways etc). KOPT may keep a liaison officer in Nepal for dealing with day to day issues. Border restrictions for transit into Nepal should be done away with and vigilance should be done with the help of risk management & IT.” Highlighting the importance of Indo-Nepal as well as regional trade MCCI officials maintained that an efficient logistics and transportation infrastructure would be critical for strengthening India’s trade and economic engagement with its neighboring countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar.