Amazon India has announced its plan to open 10 new Fulfillment Centres (FC) across the country. These new FCs will be set up in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Patna, Lucknow, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Ludhiana and Ahmedabad. All new fulfillment centres will be operational before the festive season. With this expansion, Amazon.in will have more than 60 FCs in 15 states, with a total storage capacity of over 32 million cubic feet. The new additions include the specialised network of FCs for large appliances and furniture category and receive centers. “With the expanded network of more than 60 fulfillment centres, we look forward to creating thousands of job opportunities with competitive pay,” said Akhil Saxena, VP, Customer Fulfillment Operations (APAC, MENA & LATAM), Amazon India.

Federation of Freight Forwarders’ Association in India (FFFAI) along with CONCOR and RZD Logistics (Russian Railway) has organised an interactive webinar to discuss the trade potential of containerised transportation over the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC). Calling INSTC an opportunity for regular movement to CIS countries, Shankar Shinde, Chairman Elect, FFFAI, says, “We have been continuously working on this route for development and found that this route would help the trade with less transit time and add upon alternate products such as agro commodity with good shelf life. This is also a good opportunity for NVOCCs, consolidators and multimodal transport operators to come on board in order to start their operations.” INSTC Agreement was signed between India, Iran and Russian Federation to facilitate movement of goods via Iran, Caspian Sea and Astrakhan to Russia and adjoining countries of the CIS region. The Agreement provides for a shorter route for trade to Iran, Russian Federation and beyond. Through this transportation route India’s exports can get a competitive advantage due to lower cost and less delivery time.

The South Central Railway (SCR) has announced the operation of Indian Railways’ first Cargo Express which will run between Hyderabad and New Delhi from August 5. As part of the initiative to increase the market share of railways in the movement of general cargo across the nation, the SCR has come out with a concept of starting a Cargo Express, under which a time tabled freight train will start from Sanath Nagar, Hyderabad to Adarsh Nagar in New Delhi. The train will depart every Wednesday evening from Hyderabad and reach Delhi on Friday morning. “The zone has always been a step forward in introducing customer friendly initiatives for the freight segment and introduction of Cargo Express will further strengthen these initiatives,” said, Gajanan Mallya, General Manager, SCR. “The concept will be particularly beneficial to agriculture producers, traders, cargo movers, small and medium/ mini plant owners who will be able to move their cargo in record transit time at very low tariffs,” he adds.

According to Ashish Asaf, MD & CEO, SA Consultants & Forwarders, “The Indian logistics industry has been used to credit risks over the past few decades. The logistics sector has realised the need of liquidity and cash flows during the COVID-19 crisis. The industry stakeholders should ensure that there is uniformity in offering planned credits to customers or work on upfront payments for financial security to the players.” “Another important aspect is the need of digital mode of working. Digitisation would help not only the financial part, but also the freight forwarding tasks. Also, if companies have digital ERP systems, they can keep a daily track of their work, ensure employees are sincerely engaged in their duties and also interact with the team regularly,” he adds.

Shipwaves has joined Maersk-IBM developed TradeLends platform to accelerate the digitisation of the ocean logistics space in India and the Middle East. Having recently allowed shipping bill of lading to be filed over a blockchain platform, India has been betting big on blockchain-enabled solutions to digitize its maritime supply chains. Along the same vein, TradeLens provides controlled, permissioned access to secure and immutable transportation documents while bringing together stakeholders such as shipping carriers, ports, customs offices, and other players in the ecosystem through its blockchain-led platform. Through this linkage, Shipwaves will be able to provide timely end-to-end supply chain visibility, secured sharing of digital shipping documents, and data directly from partners. This will enable the forwarder to improve efficiency and decrease operational costs by a significant margin. Additionally, the smart-contract based workflows will automate and digitise multi-party interactions, which will result in improved efficiency.

According to the latest data from the Indian Ports’ Association (IPA), container cargo in terms of TEUs (twenty foot equivalent unit) at India’s 12 major ports dropped 32.28 per cent to 1.74 million in the first quarter of the current fiscal. In terms of tonnage, the container cargo declined 30.11 per cent to 26.34 million tonnes (MT) in the quarter. These ports had handled containers to the tune of 2.57 million TEUs and 37.69 MT in terms of tonnage in the April-June period of the previous financial year. India has 12 major ports — Kandla, Mumbai, JNPT, Mormugao, New Mangalore, Cochin, Chennai, Kamarajar (Ennore), V O Chidambaranar, Visakhapatnam, Paradip and Kolkata (including Haldia) — that handle about 61 percent of the country’s total cargo traffic.

Air Cargo Forum India has (ACFI) elected Cyrus Katgara of Jeena & Company as the President of ACFI for the year 2020-2022. Katgara, who held the post of Vice President earlier, takes over from Tushar Jani of Cargo Service Centre. Yashpal Sharma of Skyways Air Services, who previously served as Hon. Secretary, has now been appointed as Vice President of ACFI. Sanjiv Edward of Delhi International Airport and Avinash Razdan of Delhi Cargo Service Center have taken over as Hon. Secretary and Hon Treasurer respectively.

Calling digitalising the complete supply chain a need of the hour, Nihar Parida, Industry Expert & Supply Chain Consultant, says, “Data at every point should be captured as much as possible. Also, data analysis should happen at a single point and not in silos.” He continues, “During the change in tax from local sales tax to VAT, most organisations opened warehouses in every state. The moment GST was declared; the finance and logistics fraternity started exploring how they could consolidate their stocks in few warehouses as the state borders became obsolete from the tax point of view. For the first time, the logistics people started thinking of inventory from a logistics cost saving perspective rather than a tax saving perspective. But again most were guided by the common thought of consolidation. The LSPs also started selling the idea to ensure they could save cost in their multi-user facilities. The distribution factor was side-lined. The transporters and the courier companies were in the limelight.”

Emirates SkyCargo has facilitated the movement of essential commodities and other supplies for individual consumers and businesses across the world by operating more than 10,000 cargo flights to destinations across six continents between April and June 2020. The flights were a mix of scheduled, ad-hoc and charter operations. Nabil Sultan, Divisional Senior Vice President – Cargo, Emirates, says, “Emirates SkyCargo has innovatively adapted our cargo operations and offerings over the last few months in line with rapidly evolving market demand. In keeping with our core value as a global facilitator of trade and economies, we have re-grown our network to over 100 destinations with robust flight frequencies to key production and consumer markets.”

DHL Global Forwarding has opened its first temperature-controlled facility in Hyderabad to meet the growing demand for reliable temperature-controlled transportation from point of departure to arrival. Located in the cargo satellite building close to the airport in Hyderabad, the new facility offers conditioning of packaging materials in different chambers for varying temperatures up to -20̊ C, to meet the stringent needs of pharmaceutical shipments. “To meet the intricate requirements of each life science and healthcare shipment, our goal is to ensure that all goods are vigilantly handled by DHL’s core team of professionals with customised end-to-end solutions,” says, Niki Frank, CEO, DHL Global Forwarding, India, in adding, “By sending pre-conditioned packaging units to our customers’ premises to pick up temperature-sensitive medicines and vaccines, we ensure that the highest possible integrity of temperature control is achieved within the supply chain during export.”