This story is from January 9, 2019

Concor to kick off operation to transport containers through coastal shipping today

Concor to kick off operation to transport containers through coastal shipping today
NEW DELHI: In a first, Container Corporation of India (Concor), a Navaratna PSU under the railway ministry, will kick off its operation to transport containers through coastal shipping from Kandla to Tuticorin via Mangalore and Cochin on Thursday. The debut run gains significance considering that movement of cargo through waterway rather than by rail is cheaper, seamless and is also less polluting.
According to sources, to begin with Concor will have weekly services on this coastal route and will deploy two vessels and each will have the capacity to carry about 700 containers.
The first voyage will be flagged off by Union shipping minister Nitin Gadkari and railway minister Piyush Goyal. It’s learnt that Concor aims to strengthen the infrastructure along west coast to begin with and would extend this to the east coast to achieve increased throughput on the network.
Officials said this is the first move by the railway PSU to enter into the coastal shipping sector and Concor has mapped the business potential of this operation. They added a number of commodities have been identified for transportation through this coastal route, which include ceramic tiles and sanitary ware, soda ash cotton bails, groundnut, waste paper, and consumer durables. “With this we will be one of the major players in the multi-modal logistics sector,” said an official.
The railway PSU will arrange the first mile and last mile connectivity over and above the port handling and coastal transportation of loaded/ empty containers and bulk/ break-bulk cargo. This will provide seamless solution to customers from origin to destination.
This is for the first time the Centre has pushed coastal shipping and inland waterway as an alternate mode of transport. Gadkari, on Tuesday, said waterways should be the first priority mode for transportation followed by railways and road should be the last in the ladder.
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