State-owned Container Corporation of India Ltd (Concor) is soon starting coastal movement of goods as part of its multi-modal logistics strategy to offer a cheap, fast, and cleaner mode of transportation.
In June this year, Concor and Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to explore business opportunities for leveraging the advantage of each other’s infrastructure and experience in synergy to offer seamless and cost-effective end-to-end logistics services to customers under a single window.
Sanjay Swarup, CMD, Concor stated that coastal shipping is a very eco-friendly mode of transport. The company had launched the coastal shipping services pre-Covid in Jan 2019 and had developed some streams from Gujarat to the South. The service was stopped in 2020 during Covid.
“So now we have collaborated with the Shipping Corporation and very soon, we will be starting coastal movement from Gujarat to South India and even from South to the eastern side of the country. So you will hear very soon that we are going to start the coastal movement,” Swarup recently told investors.
The MoU will enable SCI’s shipping services to develop Concor’s footprint in overseas locations and also to foray into the field of coastal and inland waterways trade to offer a wide range of customisable logistics solutions for the benefit of trade at large.
The commodities identified for the coastal route include waste paper, ceramic tiles, sanitary ware, soda, cotton bale and consumer durables.
Concor has been focusing on providing first- and last-mile connectivity to its customers and coastal shipping can be a key link to this. It has also started a logistics app for providing first-mile and last-mile services.
“First mile, last mile (FMLM) has been a very big hit. I can now share the volume numbers with you. In the first quarter (Q1FY25), in the first mile, last mile, we had an income of Rs 82 crores, which is a growth of 35% year-on-year,” said Swarup.
The company has kept a growth target of 50% for FY25.
“We are quite confident that with the launch of the app on a pan-India basis and other measures that we are taking like educating the customers of the benefits. So we will be able to achieve 50% FMLM,” he added.