Container Corporation of India (Concor) has given developmental orders to Braithwaite & Company Limited and BHEL for 1,000 containers each. With 2,000 containers expected from these two sources, Concor is looking for sources within India to buy the remaining requirement.
Earlier Concor imported containers from China. Through global tenders earlier, Concor had discovered that the locally-made containers were pricier by about 25 per cent.
Each box costs about ₹2.5 lakh. Concor CMD V Kalyana Rama said this in a virtual press conference on Friday.
Team work
Concor, BHEL, Braithwaite can work as a team to make India a destination for making containers, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said earlier in the day. To meet container shortage with boxes that are made in India, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal had pitched if the sheds of Indian Railways’ coach factories could also be used for making containers, apart from public enterprises like Braithwaite & Company Limited and BHEL.
Usually, containers are made in China. Post Covid-19, with supply chains disrupted, there was a container shortage faced by India and many countries globally.
Concor, which needs about 8,000 containers every year for domestic use in the country, expects that demand to stay for the next five years.
“In last three years, Concor had ordered 23,000 containers,” said Rama.
Goyal also said India should look at mandating all containers within the country to be GPS enabled so that they can be tracked.
Preparation
Later, Concor, said in a statement, “Major steel players like SAIL, Tata Steel and Jindal Steel confirmed availability of required better grade steels. Indian Manufacturing companies like BHEL, Braithwaite,…DCM Hyundai (Hindustan Vaccum), intimated that technology required to manufacture these containers was available with them.…International container inspection agencies like Lloyd Register and Indian Register of Shipping highlighted their Indian presence and intimated that they were already working with some Indian Manufacturers to ensure outturn of world class containers.”
