The Ambala Railway Division, for the first time in its history, sent a special parcel train beyond India’s border to Benapole in Bangladesh with cotton yarn on Sunday. This earned the division ₹25.69 lakh for carrying 468 tonnes of freight in collaboration with mgX.com, a subsidiary of MGH Group, a Singapore-based shipping conglomerate, officials said. This train, consisting of 20 parcel vans, was flagged off by Vivek Sharma, senior divisional commercial manager, Himanshu Pant, director and CEO of MGH India, and other railway officials. Sharma said that businessmen in and around Punjab and Haryana have been transporting commodities by road to Bangladesh in small quantities, which is costly for them. “During the lockdown, they could not move goods by road. Then, railway staff and officials approached them and explained the transportation facilities by rail. To move the consignment by goods trains, it is mandatory for farmers and businessmen to mobilise the quantity in bulk,” he said.

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), in its FY21 annual report, has revealed its plans to continue growing its cargo operations with a special focus on logistical services in an effort to emerge as the preferred logistics partner for exporters and businesses. As per the report, the company currently enjoys a 25% share of India’s Exim cargo and aims to almost double it to 40% in the next 4 years. “We intend to retain our position by achieving 500 million tonne cargo throughput by 2025 and will lead to enhancing our market share of the Indian market to 40%,” said the company. In FY21, APSEZ also showcased a growth of 11% from last year in terms of cargo handling volume, taking it to 247 million tonnes. This was against a 5 percent decline registered by all Indian ports. With a clear focus to take the company’s return on capital employed (ROCE) to over 20 percent by 2025, as per the annual report, the Gautam Adani-led company reported a ROCE of 12 percent in FY21. “Our maturing ports and newly acquired ports are growing in tandem as twin growth engines in enhancing free cash generation,” said the company.

Dr A Sakthivel, the new elected President of FIEO welcomed the stimulus package of Rs 6,28,993 crore announced by Hon’ble Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs, Ms Nirmal Sitharaman to support Indian economy in fight against COVID-19 pandemic during these difficult and challenging times. This includes expansion of the scope of an emergency credit guarantee scheme, that offered relief to a large number of MSMEs, from ₹3 trillion to ₹4.5 trillion and guarantees to banks for their loans to micro lenders for lending up to ₹1.25 lakh per person. These will further help in increasing liquidity for micro and small businesses across the country, said Dr A Sakthivel. New FIEO Chief added that yet another initiative to give a boost to the exports sector by the FM is the announcement of Rs 33,000 Crore for Project Exports through National Export Insurance Account (NEIA). This will facilitate both goods and services exports as many economies are opening up with large investment to propel project exports from India. Further Rs 88,000 crore boost to Export Insurance Cover through Export Credit Guarantee Corporation (ECGC) will address the rising credit risks, during and aftermath of the pandemic, thereby providing relief to the exporters in terms of liquidity, reiterated Dr Sakthivel.

The Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways had presented the draft Indian Ports Bill, 2021 which aims at abolishing the Indian Ports Act, 1908 and substituting it with a more relevant and contemporary act addressing present and future needs.The draft Indian Ports Bill, 2021 seeks to bolster structured growth and sustainable development of ports to garner enhanced investments in the port sector. It also seeks to optimise utilisation of the Indian coastline by effective administration and management of ports. Moreover, introduction of this statutory bill will help produce a refined and comprehensive regulatory blueprint for new ports and management of existing ones. If realised, these measures will further boost the investment prospects in Indian maritime and ports sector. The bill seeks to create a conducive environment for continued growth and sustained development of ports sector in India through the following methods: *Constitution of Maritime Port Regulatory Authority *Formulation of National Port Policy and National Port plan *Formulation of specialised Adjudicatory Tribunals namely Maritime Ports Tribunal and Maritime Ports Appellate Tribunal.

Indian multinational conglomerate Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is investing in building state-of-the-art supply chain infrastructure across India by linking all major sourcing and consumption locations. “An automated, modular, reliable and scalable warehousing and logistics ecosystem will enable us to deliver products anywhere across the country in the shortest possible time,” announced Chairman of RIL, Mukesh Ambani during the 44th Annual General Meeting. The chairman said that the company’s retail business is on a hyper-growth trajectory and it is in a position to be able to provide 10 lakh jobs in the near future.

Air cargo firm SpiceXpress and e-commerce logistics platform Delhivery have come together to build drone delivery capability in the country. SpiceXpress, which is the cargo division of airline firm Spicejet, is one of the key consortiums shortlisted by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to conduct trials on Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drones in India, the statement said. “We are very excited about this project as it promises to be a game-changer in times to come. The MoU is a win-win for both companies leveraging their strengths to deliver great synergies”, said Sanjiv Gupta, CEO, SpiceXpress The collaboration is an extension of our long-standing relationship with Spicejet. We look forward to leveraging our capabilities to revolutionize the logistics ecosystem” added Ajith Pai, COO, Delhivery. Logistics firm Delhivery will provide the necessary on-ground support to ensure speedy and reliable first-mile and last-mile logistics, according to the statement.

In the ever-evolving scene of the logistics sector, it is now more important than ever to increase the accessibility of online tools and extend the opportunities of logistics software to as many users as possible. In this context, Globalia Logistics Network has decided to open up FreightViewer for access by non-members. Globalia agents will now be able to send and receive quote requests to any partner both inside and outside the network. This quote request comes in the form of an interactive link that needs to be clicked on and filled up by the recipient. Most importantly, the primary advantage of this new feature is that from now GLB agents can store the rates from independent freight forwarders outside the Network in FreightViewer software. Simply put, the addition of this new feature has enabled the agents to accelerate the quote generation process and even allowed them to store all quotations provided by any freight forwarder on this unique platform.

Austrian Airlines has announced that it is ending its preighter operation after 15 months. The Lufthansa Group-owned airline’s long-haul passenger aircraft have regularly operated as freighter-only aircraft between Asia and Europe since March last year. Two B777s (OE-LPA and OE-LPC) even had their seats removed to boost cargo capacity and acted as the “backbone” of the operation. OE-LPA will be the last of the two aircraft to have its seats replaced and from July the aircraft will resume passenger flights to North America, among other destinations. “On 159 flights, we transported 4,500 tons of relief supplies to Europe in the fight against the pandemic,” the carrier said. “The cargo included 200m protective masks, 30m test kits and more than 15m medical gloves. We flew the goods to Austria, but also to Germany and Italy.”

The Defence Ministry has signed a contract with Goa Shipyard Ltd (GSL) for the construction of two pollution control vessels for the Indian Coast Guard at a cost of about Rs 583 crore, officials said. The ships are being procured to significantly augment the capability of the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) to respond to incidents of oil spills at the sea and also boost the force’s pollution response mechanism. These two vessels are scheduled for delivery by November 2024 and May 2025 respectively. The defence ministry said the “special role ships” will be indigenously designed, developed and built by GSL.“The acquisition will significantly augment the capability of ICG to respond to oil spill disasters at sea,” it said.

FM Logistic will introduce its new tagline, “Supply Change”, in an event on sustainable supply chain models on June 29th. The new tagline was created by FutureBrand, a brand consultancy. The new signature acknowledges that supply chains must transform to foster a more responsible consumption and sustainable economy. It also reflects FM Logistic’s commitment to contributing to that change. Finally, Supply Change speaks to the evolution of FM Logistic. “FM Logistic aims to become a reference partner in the field of sustainable, omnichannel supply chains. The double whammy of the pandemic and business disruption urges us to rethink the way supply chains work. They have to become more sustainable and cooperative, while meeting demands for solidity, resilience, speed and cost-efficiency. Our new signature, “Supply Change”, speaks to our commitment to working alongside our customers and business partners in this direction and to making a collective impact,” said FM Logistic’s CEO Jean-Christophe Machet