Category Archives: Rail/Road

Cutting through the challenges posed by the COVID pandemic, Indian Railways have recorded the highest freight loading and earning figures in the month of August. As per the statement released by the Railway Ministry, the freight loading by Indian Railways was 110.55 million tonnes which is 16.87% higher compared to the month of August last year (94.59 million tonnes of freight loading for the same period). In addition to this, the Indian Railways has also earned an amount of INR 10,866.20 crore from freight loading during the month of August 2021, which is 20.16% higher compared to August 2020. The national transporter in the month of August transported 13.53 million tonnes of Iron Ore, 47.94 million tonnes of Coal, 3.60 million tonnes of Mineral Oil, 5.77 million tonnes of Pig Iron as well as Finished Steel, 4.16 million tonnes of Fertilizers, 6.88 million tonnes of Food Grains, 6.3 million tonnes of Cement (excluding clinker) as well as 4.51 million tonnes of Clinker.

E-commerce platforms like Amazon India, Flipkart and Zomato, ahead of the festive season, have begun adding new members to their blue-collar arsenal. As the pandemic-era curbs have fuelled strong growth in online ordering, the e-commerce giants are luring them with joining and performance-linked bonuses to efficiently meet consumer demand. This festive season, the e-commerce companies and logistics operators are expecting a sales estimated to rise as much as 15% more than the pre-pandemic festive season in 2019, said Nilabh Kapoor, business head, OLX People, a recruitment service provider. “With businesses recovering in most parts, hiring of temporary workers has seen 3-4X growth in the recent past and is expected to double during the festive season to keep up with rising demand across platforms,” Kapoor said.

The inland container depot (ICD) project in Gazipur’s Dhirashram area is finally going to be implemented under the public-private partnership (PPP) model as the government is considering making Dubai-based terminal operator DP World a partner in the venture. Officials of the Public Private Partnership Authority Bangladesh said DP World has already agreed to work on the project. Now, discussion is going on to fix the terms and conditions of the final agreement. Dr Najmus Sayadat, director (investment promotion) of PPP Authority, said, “We are preparing a document for DP World, which may take six months. The investment of DP World will be finalised based on the document.” The ICD will be built on a 160-acre site near Dhirashram Railway Station in Joydevpur, Gazipur. According to Bangladesh Railway, the cost of the project could be up to $300 million. Once it is complete, the Kamalapur ICD will be relocated to Dhirashram. This is expected to help container transport by rail go up by as high as 30%.

India’s logistics market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 10.5% until 2025 spurred by faster adoption of modern technology, e-enabled fleet, and warehouse management solutions. Had it not been for the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the logistics and supply chain industry — the backbone of global trade and services — would not have moved in a hurry to engineer the adoption of IoT, machine learning, and artificial intelligence in their day-to-day operations. “The disruptions caused by Covid-19 are making global companies rethink their supply chain strategy. Two major areas that are likely to see great traction are improved visibility across supply chains (both for cargo shipments and documentation) and drawing a balance between just-in-time and just-in-case,” says Sanjay Bhatia, Co-founder & CEO at Freightwalla, a digital freight forwarder.

Euler Motors, a manufacturer of electric commercial vehicles, announced that BigBasket, Flipkart, Udaan, and some other e-commerce, hyperlocal and B2B delivery players have placed an order with it for 2,500 EVs for intra-city deliveries. The companies will deploy Euler Motors’ EVs for first, mid and last-mile operations across Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. Deliveries of these vehicles are scheduled to take place in the next six to eight months. The Delhi-based OEM company also announced the launch of its first three-wheeler L5 cargo vehicle around the festive season this year. The company is currently plying 300+ vehicles as part of a pre-launch pilot with e-commerce and FMCG companies for hyperlocal delivery in Delhi-NCR. Euler claims of clocking over 10 million km and helping reduce carbon emissions of over 1,000 tonnes, which is equivalent to 1 million litres of saved fuel.

New age domestic logistics and supply chain giant Delhivery has acquired Bengaluru-based Spoton Logistics for an undisclosed sum, a move primed to strengthen its existing B2B capabilities. With the acquisition, Samara Capital and Xponentia, which acquired Spoton from IEP in 2018, have made a full exit for cash as part of the transaction. Spoton Logistics is a leading multimodal express logistics and supply chain solutions company in the country. “Over 10 years, Delhivery has established a leading position in B2C logistics and now by combining our part truckload business with Spoton’s, we will be on the path to the same position in B2B express as well.” said Sahil Barua, CEO, Delhivery “Spoton is known for its focus on customer relationships and service quality, professional management and technology and engineering, which are values shared by Delhivery as well, and that sets us up to together be one of India’s leading logistics companies.” said Abhik Mitra, Managing Director, Spoton Logistics.

DTDC successfully transported approx 39,000 doses of Covishield vaccines across India for a leading Bengaluru based hospital chain. DTDC leveraged its precision logistics solutions and wide reach to deliver the Covishield vaccine across five cities – Gurgaon, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Raipur and Jaipur in a time-bound operation. The time and temperature-sensitive task was done using a unique packaging solution, with added features like Temperature monitoring, Control Tower enabled movement, Continuous alerts and notifications to clients and a pan-India delivery network ensuring the utmost security. The DTDC Transportation Control Tower, dedicated to this movement, ensured that end-to-end transportation was completed within 12 hours. All along, DTDC has ensured top-tier standards of quality and best practices while ensuring timely transportation of the vaccines. DTDC carefully designed the Temperature Controlled Vaccine Transportation initiative to provide an end-to-end service. DTDC helped the hospital chain zero in on the appropriate packaging and supported them with complete knowledge of the thermal system. The entire movement was continuously monitored, and the temperature was recorded through a data logger, ensuring the client has full visibility of the temperature variation during the movement.

The New Rewari and New Palanpur section of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor recently witnessed the successful trial run of the Roll On– Roll Off (Ro-Ro) service. The rake full of flat wagons commenced its journey from New Rewari in Haryana and arrived at New Palanpur in Gujarat, covering a total distance of 630 km. Consisting of carriages of loaded and empty trucks on flat rail wagons, the new service would enable door-to-door services while ensuring fast and safe movement on rail tracks. As of now, 2,500-3,000 trucks ply on a daily basis from Rewari to Palanpur. It is intended that the licensee will run two rakes of 45 wagons each with 450 trips per rake with a total of 900 trips during a year. This initiative is a win-win proposition for all concerned stakeholders from customers to Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation to Indian Railways and off course the society at large. One of the prime benefits of the services is that the customers would be assured a faster service with transit time of roughly 10 hours vis-à-vis at least 24 hours through the road, a saving of around 14 hours. This service will result in reduced expenditure on maintenance due to less wear and tear of trucks. Furthermore, enhanced driver performance and safe cargo transit would also be ensured.

The auto industry is still reeling under issues pertaining to cost and container availability, majorly fueled by its dependence on Chinese container manufacturers and foreign shipping lines, revealed Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA) on Tuesday. ACMA president Deepak Jain said that auto component exporters are being confronted by a ‘4x to 6x increase in logistics cost due to the container issue’. The apex body, which represents the interests of the Indian auto component industry, announced that component exports recorded an 8% dip in FY21 compared to the year before, though the good news is exports to China have seen a small increase. “The container shortage began in H2 of FY21 but now the pinch has sharpened and the rates for a 40ft container to the US has gone up from $2,000 last year to $6,000 now,” said Jain. “A 40ft container to the EU used to cost $1,500 which is now $5,000. Given that the US and EU are our top export destinations, this has hit exporters badly,” the president added.

Ecom Express, a leading technology enabled end-to-end logistics solutions provider for the e-commerce industry, announced the launch of its self sign-up portal called ‘E-zippie’. The portal is for micro-entrepreneurs, small business owners, sole-proprietors and home-preneurs, to quickly, conveniently, and securely sign-up for a one-stop-shop for logistics services in less than 30 minutes. Commenting on the announcement, T. A. Krishnan, Co-founder and CEO, Ecom Express, said “With ‘E-zippie’, we can fast-track registration to less than 30 minutes against a 10 to 12 days process taken by most players in the market. The self sign-up portal is a major milestone in our effort to provide an automated and seamless experience for online businesses right from onboarding to fulfilling all their shipping requirements. We will continue to enhance customer experience by making logistics simpler and convenient for small and micro businesses, by providing direct control on their shipments and flexibility in managing end-to-end shipment life cycle. Our aim is to help them expand their market access to 27000+ PIN codes, diversify their customer base, and solidify their supply chain through Ecom Express.’’