Given the unique demographical, geographical and infrastructure challenges of India, multimodal transportation will be the key in overcoming bottlenecks and the most effective form of logistics, to leverage the opportunities of our country, writes Armin Kalyaniwalla, CEO – Project Logistics, Allcargo Logistics Ltd.
Over the last few decades and especially given the global economic scenario over the last two years, India’s growth has certainly slowed its pace, but the growth opportunity is intact. Its just about time that the right sentiments in the minds of political class will resurge to its positive levels, fuelling the private as well as public sectors to rejuvenate their growth across industries. This is evident from the fact of major decision and projects being cleared for implementation by prime ministers office especially in the domain of infrastructure. This in turn will fuel development in core sectors of our economy such as power, oil and gas, urban transportation and energy, mining, thus boosting growth in manufacturing, exports, imports and overall trade to and from India.
India’s biggest challenge in today’s growth scenario is also its largest opportunity i.e. logistics infrastructure. For trade to truly leverage the consumption and sourcing opportunity of our market, it needs seamless movement of raw materials as well as finished products from ports, to factories, to retails stores.
Given the challenges of all forms of logistics overall in the economy, multimodal transportation will be the key in overcoming bottlenecks considerably. But it needs to be looked in a holistic frame of logistics i.e. integration of infrastructure private as well as public near ports, such as CFSs, ICDs, to movements of LCL and FCL cargo; leveraging coastal shipping, which is one of the most efficient, cost effective and environment friendly modes of transportation within the country, compared to challenges of road and rail; and outsourcing 3PL and warehouse management services to experts for efficient management.
For larger projects with over dimensional cargo, such as power plants, refineries, wind mills etc., utilising end-to-end project logistics services and engineering solutions, to timely completion and implementation of these mega projects, to utilising world-class heavy equipment for efficiently managing mega projects and increasing optimisation of costs and time. This critical integration of logistics will be the key for international as well as domestic companies, to truly leverage the opportunity of India in these challenging times, as well during the turnaround of the economy. Many leaders across industries have already started extensive use of integrated logistics or multimodal transportation as it is known, as a strategy to create the competitive advantage in its operations.
The concept of holistic end-to-end approach to logistics as a strategy will witness its true potential in coming future; due to the necessity to optimise resources, especially project costs and implementation timelines. This will be more relevant to a country like India, given our socio-political inclination to economic development. Almost half of our country is surrounded by water, thus coastal shipping will be the game-changer for break bulk and bulk cargo movement, world-class CFSs near ports and ICDs across hinterlands, which will create the much-needed backbone for movement of products.
Expertise in engineering solutions and world-class equipment will be the key driver in implementing mega projects necessary for our economic development. With India also witnessing 3PL and warehousing best practices, outsourcing of these services to experts like All cargo will create the much-needed efficiency and optimisation for international as well as domestic companies, thus creating a competitive advantage for their business, in the longer run
