Category Archives: Rail/Road

Considering the pandemic situation getting worse in the country, Indian Railways has formulated a policy for the transportation of liquid medical oxygen in cryogenic tankers after a plea by the government of Maharashtra, one of the worst affected states by the coronavirus pandemic. The policy said the cryogenic tankers will be transported as a paid-for roll on-roll of (Ro-Ro) service to various destinations across states. The circular said Maharashtra’s health secretary had requested for the transport of medical oxygen in cryogenic containers. “The matter has been examined. Competent authority has approved the transport of liquid medical oxygen in cryogenic containers,” it said, detailing the charges to be levied for the service. The circular said the staff accompanying liquid oxygen trucks to be loaded on the Ro-Ro service will be charged second class ticket for the journey and only two persons will be allowed to accompany the truck. The empty flow direction of the containers will also be charged by the railways The circular said the staff accompanying liquid oxygen trucks to be loaded on the Ro-Ro service will be charged second class ticket for the journey and only two persons will be allowed to accompany the truck.

Okinawa Autotech has announced a strategic partnership with Welectric, a company engaged in the business of providing electric two wheelers on lease rental to various corporations and individuals. With this partnership, Okinawa and Welectric will collaborate to focus on working with companies involved in last mile delivery operations across India to help them switch their two wheeler delivery fleet to electric vehicles. Welectric already has a fleet of over 150 electric two-wheelers and plans to scale up its fleet to over 2,000 in the next 12 months. With this partnership, Welectric will procure electric scooters from Okinawa including the latest – Okinawa Dual – India’s first customisable B2B Electric two-wheeler – launched in January this year to propel ‘services on wheels’. This partnership will not only allow businesses to pledge for the environment and social responsibility by using electric vehicles instead of ICE ones but also result in reduced operating costs and improved employee riding convenience. Commenting on the partnership, Jeetender Sharma, MD & Founder, Okinawa Autotech, states “We are thrilled to partner with Welectric, a digital enabler in the sales, finance, maintenance, and aftermarket services for electric two-wheelers. With the rise of ecommerce and last-mile deliveries fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become imperative for businesses in the delivery segment to consistently innovate, reduce operational costs, and increase efficiency, especially amidst rising fuel prices. I believe that our electric two wheelers will be a superior solution and a good alternative to the people involved in the last mile delivery. This year, we are expecting a mass transition of two wheeler users to electric scooters and this partnership is one step ahead in this direction.” Vikas Jain, CEO & …

Etrio has joined hands with Zypp Electric to scale up the latter’s last-mile delivery with a 3-wheelers fleet. Under this association, 100 Etrio flagship brand Touro three-wheelers are going to be operational soon and this will scale up to 1000 three-wheelers in the next six to eight months. Zypp will deploy Etrio’s Touro Mini in Delhi NCR i.e Delhi, Noida, Gurugram, Ghaziabad & Faridabad. This will further be bolstered by presence across geographies in India. Etrio will provide end-to-end service support through its dealer network along with a dedicated relationship manager for maximum uptime. Commenting on the announcement, Deepak MV, Co-founder & CEO, Etrio said, “Since the launch of Touro early this year, we have seen a phenomenal response coming in from both institutional and retail customers. Touro Mini sets a new standard in the e-rickshaw/ e-loader category and the positive feedback on the product has bolstered our efforts to build best-in-class products for the last-mile delivery market. Our association with Zypp Electric is a major stride in our mission to electrifying intra-city logistics. We are delighted to partner with Zypp Electric with this product offering and are committed to providing the best of service to upscale their three-wheeler fleet and to our overarching goal to become an undisputed market leader in this category.” Akash Gupta, Co-founder & CEO, Zypp Electric said, “Zypp is a leading and largest two-wheeler logistic brand, boosting last-mile deliveries through its robust fleet and cutting edge technology via App and dashboards to all its partners. Having said that, Zypp wanted to go a step further and do an alliance with a strong OEM in the three-wheeler segment where partnering with Etrio has been a great …

Seeing a slight decrease of 0.9 per cent compared to the previous year, Dachser’s consolidated net revenue totaled EUR 5.61 billion. In contrast to the decline of 2.2 per cent in the road logistics business field, the air & sea logistics business field saw growth of 5.2 per cent. The business field benefited from having airfreight charter capacity of its own as well as from high freight rates for intercontinental transport. At the Group level, the number of shipments dropped by 2.5 per cent to 78.6 million, while tonnage fell by 2.9 per cent to 39.8 million metric tonnes. “We have delivered on our promise to be a rock of stability during the coronavirus crisis,” says, Burkhard Eling, CEO, Dachser. The compny kept its customers’ global supply chains running without interruption and came up with flexible solutions to capacity bottlenecks, particularly on intercontinental freight services. At the same time, the company provided the best possible protection for its employees’ health and supported its longstanding service partners in Europe. “Following a solid first quarter, the lockdowns in many European countries meant sometimes drastic declines in overland transport shipments,” says Eling. He adds, “There was a clear improvement by June, however, with volumes remaining more or less consistently above 2019 levels. Our business model has proved that it can withstand crises, at the same time boasting strong growth potential and adaptability.” Revenue at the air & sea logistics business field benefited from the shortages in air and sea freight capacity, and the corresponding rise in freight rates, throughout 2020. Buoyed by its activities in Asia, the business field upped its revenue by 5.2 per cent to a total of EUR 1.2 billion. …

FM Logistic India has announced that the company is deploying its first batch of electric vehicles (EVs) in Bengaluru. The first batch of EVs comprises 3-wheelers from a leading commercial vehicle manufacturer having a load capacity of 500 kg. The vehicles take approximately three hours for charging and can cover a distance of about 80 km in a single charge. The EVs will be used to carry out intra-city deliveries for WayCool, a leading player in the FMCG and food segment. FM Logistic India will be helping WayCool to carry out hyper local deliveries to local kirana stores, supermarkets as well as end consumers. Elaborating on WayCool’s efforts towards sustainable Agri-commerce, Amrit Bajpai, COO, WayCool Foods, said “Our partnership with FM Logistic is another step towards advancing fleet electrification. To start, we will have EVs constituting 5 per cent of our total fleet and will continue to increase it. WayCool is committed towards sustainable actions and innovations to drive efficiency across the Agri-commerce value chain. We strongly believe that responsible behavior needs proactive efforts and it’s our duty to leave the earth better than how we found it.” Alexander Amine Soufiani, MD – FM Logistic India, said, “At FM Logistic, sustainability is at the heart of our operations. When WayCool approached us to help them to develop a green network, we were excited to be able to provide them with a green distribution offer to help fulfill their delivery commitments within city limits. We include the challenges of sustainable development in our strategic vision – teams creating solutions for a sustainable supply chain. We are committed to reducing the impact of our business activities on the environment. We are focussed …

Flipkart has announced a strategic and commercial partnership with the Adani Group to strengthen Flipkart’s supply chain infrastructure and further enhance its ability to serve its rapidly growing base of customers. In addition, Flipkart will set up its third data centre at Adaniconnex, Chennai based facility, leveraging AdaniConneX’s world-class expertise and industry-leading data centre technology solutions. Adaniconnex is a new Joint Venture formed between EdgeConneX and Adani Enterprises. As part of this partnership, Adani Logistics will construct a massive 534,000 sq. ft. fulfilment centre in its upcoming logistics hub in Mumbai that will be leased to Flipkart to address the growing demand for e-commerce in Western India and support market access of several thousands of sellers and MSMEs in the region. Leveraging state-of-the-art technologies, the centre is expected to be operational in Q3 2022 and will have the capacity to house 10 million units of sellers’ inventory at any point. In addition to strengthening Flipkart’s supply chain infrastructure to support MSMEs and sellers, the facility will enhance local employment and create ~2,500 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs. The other prong of the partnership will see Flipkart developing its third data centre at the AdaniConnecX facility as a part of one of the largest private cloud deployments in the country, thereby further strengthening its growing marketplace e-commerce business in India. The data centre has been designed to meet the highest standards in reliability, security, and sustainability, which will capitalise on the Adani Group’s capability as the largest solar player in the country to generate and source green power. The AdaniConneX data centre is a brand-new facility enabling Flipkart to design the data centre to its growing infrastructure needs with …

In a bid to help fast track deployment of electric vehicles across its logistics fleet in the country, Flipkart has partnered with EDEL by Mahindra Logistics (MLL) as one of its key logistics partners. Flipkart has committed to 100 per cent electric mobility in its logistics fleet and will deploy more than 25,000 electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030. Mahindra Logistics will play a significant role in working with various OEMs and help Flipkart’s sustainable transition to EVs. With a shared commitment and vision towards sustainable business practices, Mahindra Logistics has already launched EDEL, its own electric delivery brand in late 2020. EDEL has partnered with companies in consumer & e-commerce to provide sustainable last-mile delivery across six cities in India. MLL through EDEL will enable Flipkart in its journey towards building a green supply chain by not only deploying a large fleet of EVs but also creating a conducive environment for EV deployment and operations across the country. This includes building supporting infrastructure and technology such as charging stations and parking lots, training workforce, route planning and even battery swapping stations in the near future. Another key focus area will be technology and control tower operations to enable greater efficiency and cost competitiveness. Hemant Badri, SVP Supply Chain, Flipkart Group, said, “Electrification of the logistics fleet is an important part of Flipkart’s larger sustainability goal and a key focus area for the company. We are happy to have Mahindra Logistics on-board as a logistics partner, who will play a major role in helping us achieve our vision of making our logistics fleet fully electric by 2030. Through collective efforts, we aim to build and support solutions that boost EV adoption …

On account of the nationwide lockdown, the Indian logistics sector has witnessed a significant sequential recovery after experiencing severe disruption in Q1 FY2021. This had created demand-side and supply-side challenges which eased in subsequent months as economic activity recovered. As per ICRA note, as lockdown-related restrictions eased and economic activity revived, the freight availability for logistics players also improved. Accordingly, many of the logistics companies reverted to pre-pandemic levels by end of Q2 FY2021 and started reporting Y-o-Y growth from Q3 FY2021, the same has continued into Q4 FY2021 as well. Freight rates also remained firm during this period. According to Rohan Kanwar Gupta, Assistant Vice President & Sector Head, ICRA Ratings, “As the economy opened up and industrial, manufacturing, construction and consumption activities picked up pace, freight availability also improved, aiding recovery in the sector. Freight rates also held up in this period. As such, the pace of revenue contraction mellowed down significantly in Q2 FY2021, and reverted to growth trajectory in Q3 FY2021. This trend was also visible in E-way bill volumes, which reached pre-pandemic levels in September 2020 and posted Y-o-Y growth in all subsequent months. While freight volumes in Q3 FY2021 were supported by the historically strong festive period, the sector sustained its volume growth even after the season ended, giving comfort regarding the sustainability of the recovery.” The recovery has also been visible across other modes of transportation as well. The rail freight traffic reported similar trends, reporting Y-o-Y growth of 5% and 10% in Q2 FY2021 and Q3 FY2021 respectively. The volumes thereafter have also held up, touching peak freight volumes in January 2021, resulting in 7% Y-o-Y growth during the fourth quarter so …

Aggressively expanding its network to extend the reach in every nook and corner of India, Shree Maruti Courier Services is planning to add 2,000 cities and towns of the country in their network and aiming to achieve Rs 1,000 crore turnover in the next five years. At present, the company has a nationwide network of over 2,650 outlets and round the clock working at 89 regional offices across India. The company has a presence in 868 cities & towns and serving to 4,600 pincodes. Elaborating the details on the plan, Ajay Mokariya, Managing Director, Shree Maruti Courier Services, said, “Despite challenging business environment, we are witnessing an increasingly strong demand across the markets. With the aggressive expansion plan, we are aiming to add additional 7,500 unique pin codes across the country. The company has added new products/verticals of surface cargo and upgraded international segment by opening up six new gateways recently. The same will ensure to achieve a target of Rs 1,000 crore turnover in next five years. Keeping in mind Prime Minister’s ‘Make in India’ and ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ mission, we are proud to contribute to India’s growth story and aiming to generate 10,000 employment opportunities with this expansion”.

In view of tremendous potential of cross border trade between Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal (BBIN) Shankar Shinde, Chairman Elect, the Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations in India (FFFAI) has recommended for seamless multimodal connectivity and strong logistics infrastructure in each of the above countries. Speaking at a webinar on ‘UN TIR System and its benefits of expansion to Bangladesh and other BBIN countries’, which was organised by FICCI in association with IRU Geneva, ICC Bangladesh and FFFAI, Shinde observed that accession to TIR Carnet would be immensely beneficial for the hassle-free cross border trade in this region. It would be pertinent to mention that FFFAI is one of the associates of TIR Carnet and have been working with the Government of India for International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC) project, under TIR Carnet. He also emphasised on well-defined policies to be framed up by the respective governments and well-trained officers including Customs and allied agencies engaged at the border check posts. Based on the INSTC route experience, where FFFAI had launched a trial run of containers, Shinde stated that point to point vehicle movement would be the pragmatic solution instead of re-working of unloading and reloading transshipment, to save cost and reduce dwell time. Accordingly, accession to TIR would expedite the process in this regard. He, however, highlighted various other challenges as regard to cross border cargo transportation, as witnessed in INSTC route. Shinde further suggested that the governments will have to provide more impetus on private logistics companies, NVOCC or multimodal logistics operators’ participation in the BBIN project and also important would be to create a BBIN website portal with complete information for trade participation and addressing issues. …