Mangaluru, Jun 27 (PTI) The New Mangalore Port Authority (NMPA) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) and Sagarmala Development Company Limited (SDCL) to develop a container freight station (CFS)-cum-warehousing facility at the port.

Envisaged as a move to enhance its capability to serve the growing export-import (Exim) container traffic in the hinterland, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) has been formed and the project is expected to be completed by June 2025, said NMPA Chairman A V Ramana after signing the MoU with CWC MD Amit Kumar Singh and SDCL MD Dilip Kumar Gupta, a release said here on Tuesday.

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The CFS-cum-warehouse is proposed to be developed on 16.6 acres of port land at an estimated cost of Rs 125.42 crore. The contribution of NMPA will be the cost of the land offered for the project, which comes to around Rs 44.25 crore, while the remaining amount will be contributed equally by SDCL and CWC.

Ramana said that NMPA has handled 1.65 lakh TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) during 2022-23 despite not having all-weather road conditions connecting the port. The port mulls over handling 1.85 lakh to 2 lakh containers during 2023-24 and 2.5 lakh to 3 lakh containers by 2024-25. The cargo and vessel related charges at the port are competitive and economical when compared to the neighbouring major ports, he added.

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The dedicated container terminal developed by the port on public-private partnership (PPP) mode has seen phenomenal growth of 8.5 per cent in one year while handling only Full Container Load (FCL) cargo. The CFS will facilitate aggregation of Less than Container Load (LCL) cargo in addition to further growth of FCL containers.

The proposed CFS will be useful for small exporters as well as agricultural product exporters who require adequate temperature-controlled storage for aggregation and handling facilities for stuffing of containerised cargo. The envisaged facility will directly reduce the container dwell time for both import and export containers.

On road connectivity, the NMPA chairman said that by February 2024, the authority expects the Ghat road to be an all-weather road catering to improved movement of the cargo to the port.

Amit Kumar Singh said the CWC has CFSs at 21 locations in the country catering to global standards. The CWC is working on bringing down the logistics cost and provide facilities at par with international standards.

SDCL MD Gupta said the CFS-cum-warehousing station will have weather, temperature and gas-controlled facilities to cater to all types of goods. As soon as the SPV is formed, the first warehouse will be built for the Coffee Board.

Shekhar Poojary of Association of New Mangalore Port Stevedores said the facility will help more cargo to reach the port. Further, Mangaluru will have two CFS facilities with the government giving permission for Mangaluru-based Delta Infralogistics (Worldwide) Limited to set up a CFS facility.

NMP Users Association members said the facility will boost LCL cargo operators who were till now depending on Bengaluru and Kochi.

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