Data from the National Spot Exchange Limited (NSEL) says the farm grade jeera (cumin) stock position at its warehouse in Unjha was 1,722 tonnes on July 26. The exchange also had 931 tonnes of jeera stored at warehouses in Siddhpur, 15 km from Unjha.
But when Business Standard visited the exchange’s warehouses in Kadi and Unjha, the picture that emerged was entirely different.
On visiting Unjha, India's largest jeera market, 110 km from Ahmedabad, NSEL was found to have stored jeera at two warehouses leased from local warehousing companies. Insiders told these reporters the exchange had stored a combined 7,100 bags (each weighing 55 kg) totalling 394 tonnes at these two warehouses. According to sources, the goods had been idle for long and no movement had taken place for a month.
The warehouses wore a deserted look, with a steel lock hanging on the iron doors. The nearby workers said hardly any activity was seen at these warehouses.
“Not many from the Unjha market deal with NSEL because of their long settlement period. In the spot market, we need to settle the trade in two-three days at the most. We make the payment and get the delivery. Hence, the model on which NSEL operates does not suit jeera traders,” a leading trader and exporter at Unjha Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) told Business Standard.
Similarly, barring a few trucks moving in and out sporadically, the plant at Kadi, where the NSEL warehouse is located, mostly exhibited a passive look. “On peak days, almost 150 trucks are lined up one after the other,” said a person at the plant on the Kadi-Thol road. But Sunday was not that day.
Forty km away from Ahmedabad, Kadi is one of the major industrial hubs near the city, housing plants of various products, ranging from sanitaryware to electronics.
The premises of the Kadi warehouse included six silos that stored castor seed, as well as a castor processing plant. Of the six silos, four carried a capacity of 5,000 metric tonnes while the remaining two could hold 20,000 metric tonnes each.
One of the small silos belongs to N K Industries, a castor oil exporter, which uses it for its plant. The rest belong to NSEL, which has a total capacity of 55,000 tonnes from five silos. “We store dry seeds in weather-proof, fire-proof silos. Since the capacity is so large, one cannot manage godowns or warehouses stacked with hundreds or thousands of gunny bags as that requires a large amount of labour as well. Instead, companies these days go for silos that are large storage containers with capacities running in thousands of tonnes,” the person at the plant explained.
Adjacent to the NSEL's warehouses in Unjha, there are huge storage capacities being used by National Collateral Management Services, an associate of National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX). Notably, while NSEL warehouses appeared deserted, the Unjha APMC was active with normal business activity even on a Sunday afternoon. Sources explain that against two warehouses used by NSEL, NCDEX has 17 warehouses, where loading-unloading takes place in large volumes daily.
