Report: India short sea shipments save up to 50%

Report: India short sea shipments save up to 50%    A short sea shipping operator in India said that transportation costs to move containers from north to south India can be cut by 40 percent to 50 percent by using coastal shipping routes instead of trucking.
   Saju Chacko, managing director of Chennai-based Caravel Logistics, told Mint that transit times for containers using the coastal shipping route, along with rail service to ports, would be comparable to using purely trucking.
   Caravel runs a service from the Port of Mundra in northwestern India to the southern Indian ports of Cochin and Tuticorin. The service links the three ports in 10 days via a chartered containership. Caravel owns the containers and chassis and has made arrangements with private rail container operators to move boxes from door to ports, the Mint report said.
   It's one of several such services coming up in India, where short sea shipping has been mentioned often as a way to make north-south goods movement more efficient. It has the added benefit of helping to unclog India's famously congested roads.
   The coastal shipping services will appeal most to shippers in inland locations that are not too far away from efficient ports and who want to distribute their goods domestically in the south. The coastal services also act as feeders for India's largest ports, in Mumbai and Chennai.