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With ease of doing business for customers becoming the new mantra for India’s state-owned ports, it’s not surprising to see container terminal operators, even if they are run by private firms at these ports, coming up with new initiatives to score brownie points.
Gateway Terminals India Pvt. Ltd, 74% owned by APM Terminals Management BV, the container terminal operating unit of Danish shipping and oil giant AP Moller Maersk Group A/S, has introduced what it calls continuous gate-in facility for exporters, a first in India.
Gateway Terminals is the biggest of the four container terminals operating at Jawaharlal Nehru (JN) Port.
The new initiative means exporters can deliver containers at the terminal for the next shipping cycle, even when there is an existing vessel docked at the terminal for the current cycle. Other terminals close their gate-in services for the next shipping cycle for about 24-36 hours when a ship is docked till the loading and unloading process is complete for that vessel.
The continuous gate-in service negates indirect costs and reduces congestion due to container-laden trucks clogging the approach roads to the port for gate opening, a common sight at JN Port for long.
It takes about 378 hours and $695 for importing a cargo container through Jawaharlal Nehru Port, according to theDoing Business Report 2016 published by the World Bank.
The time and cost involved in an import shipment are 115 hours and $214 on account of customs, 196 hours and $342 on port and border handling and 67 hours and $139 on document preparation.
Port and border handling on the import side includes the time spent by the cargo container at CFS located outside the port area which takes nearly 8-9 days at JN Port. On the import side, the average time taken in the port per se is around 36 hours at JN Port.
Similarly, on the cost for port and border handling which is indicated as $342, the cost for handling within JN Port is only around $60, while the remaining cost is related to CFS and other logistics activities.
The continuous gate-in initiative introduced by Gateway Terminals, though laudable, raises some questions. Does this mean Gateway Terminals will not follow a cut-off time for exporters to deliver their containers at its terminal?
If so, wouldn’t it render the window concept-a term used to describe the time slot given to a ship for docking at a terminal-meaningless.
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