Good growth expected in domestic operations, but need to watch out for Export-Import: CMD - CONCOR

Cont’d. from Pg. 3

Currently, exports are not very encouraging but I cannot predict it for the whole year because people are expecting the things to improve. But as we see the headwinds in the Western markets are not very good. We are facing headwinds for the exports going from India,exceptfortheprimaryagroproducts.

Value added services

Domestic is not having as good margins as ExportImport. But in the revenue, if we see our domestic revenue percentage it is increasing year on year. So to get more margins, we are trying to add a lot of valueaddedservicesintothedomestic.

We started first mail, last mail logistics. We started business support solutions. Now we started new products.Sowecallitmaterialhandlingmethodologies. Bulk cement we are handling in normal containers that is a very new product and it is picking up. So with these value-added services, we are trying to improve upon our margins in domestic and also we are trying to get intothedistributionlogisticsverysoon.

So,goingforward,theremaybealittlestrainonthe marginsbutoverallIexpectthemarginsinthisyearto be maintained. We are working towards that because inExport-Import,westarteddoingdoublestackdirect from our depot. We got a depot called Dadri in Delhi, NCR region that is now connected directly to DFC (Dedicated Freight Corridor). And now we are not going through hub. Earlier we used to go through the hub of Kathuwas. Because of this, there is a lot of interest generated. The transit times have come down.

So, there is a very good interest developed among the customers because it is better than road movement now, even for light community cargos, time-sensitive cargos everything will come on to Dadri.

Even we started doing reefer double stack also. So, a lot of new products we are introducing into the Export-Importsector.

With all that, we will be able to maintain our volumes in Export-Import that will maintain our margins. So to go with at the beginning of this financial year, the guidance will be that we will try to maintain

HMM enters

our margins. There may be a little pressures on margins,butouraimistomaintainthemargins.

Containerisation

In domestic, we are seeing good growth that is where the containerization will come in. Exports, whatever exports earlier going on, they are going on in containers only because the western countries, they accept goods more in containers rather than in thebreakbulkandbulkmode.

So there the growth will come with the export-import scenario. How we are able to do well in our exports or how much we are importing, that decides the volumes whereas in domestic, the more andmoregoodscanbecontainerized.

In the domestic side, there is a very good growth potential. With the new methods and the new products we are bringing into containers, there is a huge scope, like the bulk cement – handling of bulk commodities in normal containers. The size of this market is 400milliontonsandwehavetappednoteven10%.

So there is a huge market there to explore, to capture. It is a virgin market. There are certain headwinds for this, the container availability, because now we are encouraging Atmanirbhar Bharat in India and we are importing containers. The container shortage is there for domestic movement for us as of now. We are working along with railways and various otherindustrialunitstoovercometheshortage.

Gati Shakti

We will be working with Gati Shakti scheme, wherever the new terminals are coming up, where we have to use the Gati Shakti, we are definitely using it and at the existing terminals, there is an established business practice. We have taken up a new terminal at a place called Mandalgarh near Kota under Gati ShaktisothatwearedevelopingunderGatiShakti.

And even terminals which are not on railway land parcels where we are directly purchasing land parcels and developing, there also we will take the advantage of Gati Shakti in developing all the support services. SothereisnotimeframeforimplementingGatiShakti for all the terminals. Gati Shakti is a continuous process and the main idea of PM Gati Shakti program is to help logistics improvements and to reduce logisticscostinIndia.