Category Archives: Rail/Road

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Indian Railways has surpassed freight traffic as compared with the corresponding period last year. The national transporter increased the average speed of its freight trains to 46.16 kmph which is more than double as compared to its speed of 22.52 kmph last year. The freight loading was 3.13 metric tonne (MT) on July 27, which is higher than last year for the same period, with an increase of 0.3 per cent. However, the cumulative, overall loading of freight trains remains 18.18% less than last year. On July 27, the Railways loaded a total 1,039 rakes with freight including 76 rakes of food grains, 67 rakes of fertiliser, 49 rakes of steel, 113 rakes of cement, 113 rakes of iron ore and 363 rakes of coal. “Railways has achieved record loading of foodgrains this fiscal which is 80 per cent more than last year, and has also introduced time tabled parcel services – 4,541 services and transported 2.41 lakh tonnes cargo generating a revenue of Rs 86.88 crore,” said VK Yadav, Railway Board Chairman.

Indian Railways has completed the construction of caving work for the one-kilometre long tunnel of Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) through Aravalli mountain range, near Sohna in Haryana. The plan is to ply electric goods train with double-stack containers through it in the next 12 months. Once operational, a double-stack container goods train will be able to run at a speed of more than 100 kmph in this tunnel. The tunnel connects Mewat & Gurugram district of Haryana and negotiates a steep gradient on the uphill and downhill slope of the Aravalli range. The D-shaped tunnel has a cross-sectional area of 150 square metres to accommodate double line with higher OHE (Over Head Equipment) to enable double stack container movement on WDFC.

The government is making efforts to attract FDI in infrastructure sector to address liquidity crunch faced by the COVID-19-hit economy. Stressing on the need to bring down the logistics cost, Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister of Road Transport, Highways & MSME, said “Rs 1 lakh crore Delhi-Mumbai Expressway will result in reducing the travel time between the two metropolises to barely 28 hours resulting in lesser logistics cost by way of enhanced cargo movement in lesser time.” Gadkari also urged private players to join hands with government. He said the economy, hit by coronavirus, is passing through a crucial phase and requires liquidity. At the same, COVID-19 crisis should be turned into an opportunity as the world is now recognising India as a good place for investment.

In its endeavour to facilitate the demand of trade, Indian Railways has sent its first container train to Bangladesh connecting the two countries through Petrapole-Benapole border in West Bengal. The train carried FMCG in 40 containers and fabrics in 10 containers. The exporters from India were Procter & Gamble, Arvind and Vardhaman Textiles. This will be a permanent service connecting selected terminals of CONCOR to various stations in Bangladesh (Benapole, Jessore, Singia, Noapara, BBW). The inaugural container train ran between two countries from CONCOR’s CFS at Majerhat, Kolkata. This builds upon an experimental shipment launched by CONCOR and Indian Railways in April 2018, which used the Gede-Dharsana railway border crossing.

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.

The unprecedented COVID-19 impact will lead to quite a few changes in the Indian logistics industry, since the pandemic is now a reality that we all have to live with for a long time. Increased demand for home deliveries is likely to continue in future and logistics companies need to improve their last-mile delivery models. To meet the rising demand for home deliveries, businesses must immediately optimise key assets such as staff and vehicle capacity. They can leverage advanced crowd sourcing technologies to optimise staff capacity by on-boarding temporary or part-time delivery executives from across disparate delivery provider ecosystems.  

CEVA Logistics has launched an all-in-one portal named myCEVA to enable shippers in managing their complete shipping journey online. The online tool provides a seamless customer experience by giving them greater control over every function and a larger range of options whatever the circumstances. The portal has been designed to give customers greater control over the booking process while simultaneously improving efficiency through greater process automation. Customers can instantly receive quotes, make bookings and track shipments in real time, which will enhance the customer experience.   After a successful pilot phase in the US in May 2020, myCEVA is working towards covering all transport modes in every region of the world and has been launched in a phased manner with FCL and LCL ocean freight customers using specific trade lanes from/to the US, China and India.

Maersk’s customer-oriented mobile app witnesses highest usage amongst customers in India. With over 4,000 users, India topped the charts globally amongst the countries where Maersk’s customers are actively using the mobile app. Over 1.8 million actions by customers were recorded on the app in the second quarter of 2020 (April to June). These were more than double of those recorded in the first quarter of 2020 (January to March). These include any action performed by users on the app like booking, tracking, checking schedules, live support etc. “As the pandemic spread across geography, our, as well as most of our customers’ operations, shifted bases to their employees’ homes. It then became imperative for the customers to adopt the digital tools for carrying out businesses from the comforts of their homes. Having invested in digital transformation over the last few years, we could provide this immediately to our customers,” said, Steve Felder, Managing Director – South Asia, Maersk.

As part of its efforts to reduce waiting times at airports, Jan de Rijk Logistics, the road feeder firm, has signed up with Trucking CDM for to manage slot allocation planning mechanism between truckers and handlers. The industry is under pressure to reduce costs but also achieve faster transit times between European airports, because much of the trucking operation is spent waiting at airports. Stefan Pieters, Manager of Operations & Development, Jan de Rijk, says, “Our biggest challenge boils down to the waiting hours spent at cargo handling facilities, caused by lack of communication and transparency. As there is often no contractual relation between the trucker and the handler both parties operate on behalf of the airline but not directly connected to each other. If we could share data about when the freight is available, the status of vehicle combined shipment information we could communicate much better with the handler thus creating, insight and data sharing for all parties involved.” The Trucking CDM platform provides transparency, predictability and a slot allocation planning mechanism between truckers and handlers. It allows data sharing between the involved stakeholders in regard to the truck movement.