Category Archives: Rail/Road

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.

Maruti Suzuki India has announced that it has transported more than 6.70 lakh cars via the Indian Railways over the last six years, witnessing a CAGR of over 18 per cent. In this process the company offset nearly 3,000 metric tonnes (MT) of CO2 emissions. Avoiding more than one lakh truck trips on the National Highways has significantly helped reduce carbon footprint and save 100 million litres of diesel, the company claims. In the last financial year, Maruti Suzuki dispatched over 1.78 lakh cars by rail mode, marking 15 per cent increase over previous year. As it further claimed, this accounted for nearly 12 per cent of total sales of the company in the year. Kenichi Ayukawa, Managing Director & CEO, Maruti Suzuki India, said, “Considering the increasing volumes, our team felt the need for large scale logistics flow. We realised, that not only for expansion but also for risk mitigation we have to look beyond road mode logistics.”

Portall Infosystems has collaborated with GOCON in order to provide trucking services on PCS1x; a cloud based new generation technology with user-friendly interface The service is already live on PCS 1x. GOCON, a digital transport aggregator platform that connects operators (Trailers and Truckers) with shippers, has on-boarded the collaborative P-CaSo platform. The company is known for its ability to deliver effective transportation solutions vide their own and leased fleet across the country. Shirishchandra Shah, Chief Product Officer, Portall, said “Coming from the well known transportation fleet owner Roadwings – Portall has good reason to believe GOCON will serve the trade well. We thank IPA for their support to add trucking services as a functionality on PCS 1x to better serve the ecosystem.” “We have an established transport company with a large owned and leased fleet who have now embraced digital business. We are pleased to tie up with Portall whose work in the digital landscape of India is well known and appreciated.” Pratyaksh Sureka, Founder, GOCON. IPA (Indian Ports Association), an autonomous body under the Ministry Of Shipping, which launched the PCS 1x in Dec 2018 has been working closely with the trade to expand functionality and features and the addition of this service has ensured that the users can get attractive rates which can help bring down the logistics costs.