Throughput at Concor's Nagpur depot slumps

The Nagpur inland container depot (ICD) of the Container Corporation of India Ltd (Concor) is facing acute shortage of containers after "bombs" and other war material were discovered in some imported scrap containers.

The throughput at the ICD has fallen drastically as containers are no longer easily available.

The ICD was doing well just a couple of months back notching up a throughput of 4,500 containers. This has come down to around 3,400 containers now.

The ICD was getting around 2,100 containers as imports and was regularly dispatching 1,600-1,700 containers for export from the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust. The rest of the containers were either "parked" here for further dispatch or moved as empties.

In all, 16 bombs and other ordnance were discovered in the imported scrap at the ICD in the past fortnight.

Chief general manager, central region of Concor, Kapil Rawat admitted that growth could be affected this financial year.

He, however, maintained that the ICD should be able to reach its target of throughput of 50,000 TEUs against 42,000 TEUs done last fiscal.

All containers of imported scrap have since been detained at the ICD until officials of the Customs and Central Excise Department go through the contents.

This has resulted in containers being detained for between 7 and 20 days where it took three-four days to de-stuff and dispatch them earlier.

Many leading shipping lines including Maersk Sealand India have started refusing containers for importing scrap.

Incidentally, scrap has been a major import item for the Nagpur ICD contributing as high as 40-45 per cent of its throughput.

Scrap imports have been on the rise at the ICD for the past six months and the throughput had gone up from mere 200 containers per month in early 2003 to 1,600 containers last month.

The increase was due to the upswing in the secondary steel industry with Lloyd Steel (at Wardha, and Ghughus in Chandrapur District) alone importing as many as 600 containers a month.

Other major importers also included Prakash Steel and Godavari Steel at Bhilai which were getting the containers cleared at the Nagpur ICD.

As scrap came only in twenty feet equivalent unit or standard sized containers and exports commodities (rice and de-oiled cakes) too mainly required these containers, they found ready use.

Now with all containers of imported scrap being subjected to a thorough check-up they are piling up at a separate 5,000 square metre area demarcated at the ICD.

Concor had 80 imported scrap containers which were to be de-stuffed for checking at the beginning of the month.

The Ministry of Commerce, Directorate General of Foreign Trade had issued a circular on October 18, directing that containers with imported high metallic scrap be given a thorough go over by the Customs Department.

Another circular issued on October 25 directed all imported scrap containers coming after that date to be diverted to the Tuglakabad ICD for the go over.

Containers in the pipeline, which had already left the ports or which had landed at an ICD and were pending de-stuffing, were to be checked at the ICD itself.

The second circular was obviously issued when much to the embarrassment and concern of the ministry, bombs and war material started popping up all over the country at Ghaziabad, Lucknow, Thane, Nagpur, and other cities.

The two circulars are proving to be a death knell for growth at various ICDs including Nagpur.

The first half of the financial year saw imports at the Nagpur ICD go up by 70 per cent. Exports, too, had registered a 20 per cent growth.