Concor Vizag H1 revenues up 54%

The Container Corporation of India Limited (Concor)'s Vizag office witnessed an increase in revenues of 54 per cent at Rs 9.65 crore in the first half of the current fiscal, as compared to Rs 6.23 crore in the previous fiscal's corresponding period.

"Though our growth in container handling was only 13 per cent, our earnings increased by 54 per cent due to the rise in Delhi-bound container cargo and high-value cargos like ferro chrome and steel products," V Kalyana Rama, senior general manager of Concor, told Business Standard.

In the first half of the current fiscal, Concor's Vizag office handled 5,260 container boxes as compared to 4,648 boxes in last fiscal's corresponding period, thus posting a growth of 13 per cent.

"Our total earnings were Rs 12.5 crore last fiscal. This fiscal, we expect to touch the Rs 25-crore mark," Kalyana Rama said.

"After the development of the container terminal at the Vizag Port by Visakha Container Terminal Private Limited, the container traffic has been increasing gradually. So, Concor is targeting to handle 15,000 container boxes this fiscal as compared to 8,000 boxes handled last fiscal," he added.

Concor is expected to sign an MoU with Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) soon to move the steel products to different places by containers.

"VSP has been transporting large quantities of steel products by road. Now it prefers to send its products through containers. In the first half of the current fiscal, Concor has transported around 4,000 tonnes of VSP's steel products by container boxes. Once the MoU is signed, Concor will transport large quantities of VSP products by containers to Indore, Ahmedabad, Faridabad, Mumbai, Chandigarh etc," Kalyana Rama said.

Concor's container freight station (CFS) at Vizag will starts its operations from January 2005. "Concor is investing Rs 10 crore to set up this CFS. The CFS will have a capacity to store 1,500 containers boxes including refer containers at a time. We expect revenues of Rs 4 crore from the CFS operations alone," he said.