Commenting on the readiness of logistics industry to handle the transportation of COVID-19 vaccine, Satish Lakkaraju, Chief Commercial Officer, Agility Global Integrated Logistics, says “India has been in the business of exporting pharmaceuticals from last so many years. All the airports in India have pharma facilities; Delhi & Mumbai have pharma centres and Mumbai has also upgraded its facility, Hyderabad always had a pharma centre, Bengaluru has a ‘Coolport’. It now depends on where the vaccine comes. India is more than ready for the export; domestically if the need comes in there will be more upgradations to be done. However, we are ready and we have made investments in terms of upgrading the warehouses.”

Stressing on the impact of COVID-19 on cargo movement, Ravi Jakhar, Chief Strategy Officer, Allcargo Logistics, says, “Although the COVID-19 has disrupted the economy and affected the cargo movement during the lockdown phase, the overall impact of the pandemic situation on the logistics sector will only remain in the short-term. The sector has, in fact, shown tremendous resilience to weather the storm. As the economy is showing signs of revival and the manufacturing sectors are coming back to normal, the logistics sector should regain its pre-COVID momentum soon. Unorganised logistics players with limited ability to navigate through the crisis may however get impacted.”

Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) successfully executed the handling of MV PIONEER DREAM carrying project cargo for Mumbai Trans Harbour Link Project. The Mumbai Trans Harbour Link project will provide direct access to Navi Mumbai International Airport, connecting JNPT and will also provide a convenient gateway to the Pune expressway. This is a major achievement for JNPT as the connectivity of Mumbai to Navi Mumbai through Trans Harbour Link is crucial for the socio-economic development of Mumbai and its suburban areas. The port unloaded 84 packages consisting of 1033MT of columns, supporting structures, and girders—a compound structure used to build bridges, at Shallow Water Berth on September 23 in a record time of 35.30 hours. The cargo loaded from Hai Phong Port is imported by L&T -IHI Consortium with L&T being the consignee. The delivery of Fabricated Orthotropic Steel Girders will enable faster construction work and lessen deck related on-site activities. M/s Samsara Shipping India is the vessel agents and M/s BDP International is the logistics support provider for the consignment. The Mumbai Trans-Harbour link will be the nation’s longest sea bridge to connect the city’s twin suburban Navi Mumbai. The 22-kilometer bridge, connecting Sewri in mainland Mumbai to Nhava Sheva in JNPT, Navi Mumbai, will be built on more than 10,000 girders and nearly 16.5 km of it will run over the sea and rest over land. Once operational, the bridge is expected to cut travel time between south Mumbai and Navi Mumbai. With cargo handling like this, JNPT has firmly anchored itself as the major catalyst for trade and commerce in the country and is strongly committed to provide seamless services to the growth of the nation.

In order to handle cargo operations, Vijayawada airport will soon have a designated building spanning 2,500 square metres along with cold storage facility. The domestic cargo facility was launched at the old terminal building in June 2018 and the services commenced in August and about 40 tonnes of cargo is handled per day. Estimates in this regard are under final stages and tenders will be invited shortly. Shreepa Logistics, a private firm, was given the contract to serve as the facility’s logistics partner. The airport authorities have mooted the idea of a designated building for cargo operations along with cold storage facility, considering the airport’s potential for handling special cargo flights operated by the IAF and Air India from New Delhi carrying emergency medical supplies, including PPE, N95 masks and sanitisers, during COVID-19. “We submitted representations to the AAI officials and they have prepared proposals for a designated building to handle cargo operations and a cold storage facility for preserving perishable goods,” says, Potluri Bhaskar Rao, General Secretary, Andhra Pradesh Chambers

Emphasising on working towards an atmanirbhar logistics vertical, Anamika Sinha, Chairperson, SCLA, says, “The EXIM interest of private sector and their respective futuristic disposition along with logistics streamlining will surely help achieve the bigger picture down to the level-zero in complete sync with the state and government agenda. In view of same, the Project NorthEast (NE) has been an endeavoured at SCLA and is progressive since last couple of months.” Jaideep Raha, President – NorthEast, SCLA and Webinar Session Moderator, emphasised the potential for new business opportunities in the NE which can boost the GDP growth and presented a detailed, insightful presentation on the resources and development in NER. He made a insisting and assuring request to the concerned ministries to provide for the necessary infrastructure and the logistics team united under SCLA would come forward to ensure successful implementation and would be pleased to contribute to NER business growth. The Guest of Honour for the event were H K Sharma, IAS, Secretary, Dept of Industries Government of Sikkim, Hage Tari, IAS, Secretary, Industrial Trade & Communication Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, Government of AR, K K Dwivedi, IAS, Secretary Industries, Government of Assam, N. Sivasailam, IAS, Immediate Past Spl Secretary Logistics, Patron, SCLA, Vandana Agarwal, IES, Sr. Economic Advisor, MoCA, Shashi Bhushan Shukla, IRS Member Traffic & Logistics, IWAI, Kabir Ahmed, President, BAFFA, Aparajita Banerjee, Advisory Board Member (EAST and NE India) ANZ India Business Chamber; all the eminent speakers of respective region talked about their region initiatives and new business opportunities. Dwivedi shared the initiatives by the government on building trilateral highways connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand and trade movement through waterways via Brahmaputra River from India to Chattogram …

In order to cater to the upcoming festive season demand, Gati-KWE has revamped its express distribution, warehousing, and supply chain management services. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the company expects robust 50 per cent growth in volumes during the October-December festive season. The company is actively building capacity, strengthening its supply chain and delivery capabilities to cater to the expected volume rush. “We are further augmenting our express logistics capacity by two-fold for the upcoming festive season. Our decision to expand resources and service bandwidth by hiring additional trucks is a consequence of our experience and understanding of the market underlined by our commitment to efficiently accommodate the increased and dynamic demands of our customers during this period. As we go about doubling our capabilities, we are also giving utmost attention to COVID-19 care and safety and ensuring 100% adherence to precautions for our staff members, operators, partners, and all other stakeholders working with us,” said Bala Aghoramurthy, Deputy Managing Director, Gati-KWE Ltd. The company is aggressively promoting various offers to drive sales. These intense efforts are expected to significantly drive logistics volumes and demand in the festive season. Additionally, the changes in buying patterns suggest that consumer sentiment in India is gradually improving. According to the recent Mintel research findings, almost 30% of Indian consumers surveyed, plan to spend more on clothes and accessories followed by other goods.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global air freight markets’ improvement remains slow amid insufficient capacity in August. Asia-Pacific airlines saw demand for international air cargo fall 18.3% in August 2020 compared to the same period a year earlier. After a robust initial recovery in May, month-on-month growth in seasonally-adjusted demand declined for the second consecutive month. International capacity is particularly constrained in the region, down 35%. Demand moved slightly in a positive direction month-on-month; however, levels remain depressed compared to 2019. Improvement continues at a slower pace than some of the traditional leading indicators would suggest. This is due to the capacity constraint from the loss of available belly cargo space as passenger aircraft remain parked. Global demand, measured in cargo tonne-kilometers (CTKs*), was 12.6% below previous-year levels in August (-14% for international operations). That is a modest improvement from the 14.4% year-on-year drop recorded in July. Seasonally-adjusted demand grew by 1.1% month-on-month in August. Global capacity, measured in available cargo tonne-kilometers (ACTKs), shrank by 29.4% in August ( 31.6% for international operations) compared to the previous year. This is basically unchanged from the 31.8% year-on-year drop in July. Belly capacity for international air cargo was 67% below the levels of August 2019 owing to the withdrawal of passenger services amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This was partially offset by a 28.1% increase in dedicated freighter capacity. Daily widebody freighter utilization is close to 11 hours per day, the highest levels since these figures have been tracked in 2012. Economic activity continued to recover in August reflected, among other things, in the performance of the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) indicator of economic health in the manufacturing sector. …

FourPL, an Australian IT consulting company specialising in supply chain and procurement, has announced a partnership with FarEye to bring predictive capability to help brands orchestrate, track, optimize and deliver goods faster. “Our customers are demanding real-time visibility in their logistics operations and expect to know exactly when, where and how their goods will be delivered.” says Brett Findlay, CEO, FourPL. FarEye helps businesses to orchestrate logistics processes in a multi-enterprise & multi-stakeholder environment to ensure seamless & efficient movement of goods. The leading machine-learning based platform is empowering global enterprises to shrink delivery time by up to 27%, increase courier productivity by up to 15%, eliminate risks by up to 57%, and achieve operational excellence. “Today’s increasingly customer-centric economy requires integrated and value-added capabilities to achieve competitive advantage. FarEye helps organisations to maximise productivity and minimise risk while continuously making logistics operations efficient. We are passionate about making movement of goods a positive experience through innovation, deployment of industry best processes and constant improvement. We make organizations future-ready by differentiating their offerings & making them best in class. This enables them to drive expected behaviour and underpin broader business objectives,” says, Kushal Nahata, CEO & Co-founder, FarEye.

Sharing his views on warehouse consolidation, Naveen Rawat, Director & Co-founder, Holisol Logistics, says, “With GST, the idea was to merge all the warehouses into two or three hubs and serve the entire country because the speed to market was not even a differentiator at that point of time. The emergence of e-commerce has done that today though GST allows you to consolidate all into one, the key business differentiator is to serve your customer faster than your competitor. Consolidation is a long-term process and at the same time the market is evolving and going towards two-hour delivery or 90-minutes delivery and hence more stock points are required.”

In a webinar on ATA & UN TIR Carnet with a focus on ‘facilitates free movement of goods across multiple international borders’, Sunil K Mall, Commissioner of Customs, Nhava Sheva, Mumbai, said, “TIR will facilitate intermodal transport and act as enabling document to cross multiple international borders without any additional checks. It will further help to improve trade between India, Central Asia & CIS countries.” While sharing his experience as the first TIR holder in India Shankar Shinde, Chairman-Elect, FFFAI, said, “Customs procedures in India should be further simplified under TIR to benefit large traders and exporters in India.” Raphael Hirt, IRU, Geneva, said, “The International Road Transport Union was very pleased to acknowledge the interest shown by Indian exporting industry towards the TIR procedure, especially the efforts made by CBIC, FICCI and FFFAI to promote this trade facilitation tool. IRU will continue to support all stakeholders involved in the implementation of TIR and its electronic version – eTIR in India. This will enable trade actors and Customs to benefit fully from the immense advantages provided by the TIR Convention which includes simplification of border crossing procedures, reduction of time and cost for the international movements of goods.” ATA Carnet is a temporary admission document, which simplifies the customs procedures and clearances in a foreign country, without paying duty or a bank guarantee for temporary import into that country. Like a passport for goods, ATA Carnet allows for the goods for which it was issued to enter any of the participating countries for up to one year. An ATA Carnet holder can avoid customs declaration and can do away with security deposit or guarantee in the country of temporary importation. …