360 Cargo Containers Exported To Europe Despite Stiff Competition From China

In line with the Make-In-India and make for the world initiatives, another domestic player has been able to export cargo containers to Europe despite direct competition from China.

Kalyani Cast Tech(KCT) exported 360 dry cargo containers worth $ 1.4 million to Europe this month and is ready to fetch more such customised export orders from the European Shipping Line in the coming months.

While the major population of containers in the world is Chinese manufactured, countries like Australia and Europe are also depending on China for container supply.

With this successful execution of the export order, KCT has joined a select list of companies who are exporting cargo containers.

Seeking some incentives from the government to reverse the trend, KCT promoter Naresh Kumar said "There should be a Product-Linked Initiative (PLI) to encourage cargo container production in India on a mass scale. If we get a little support from the government then we can get bulk orders from world market."  

Describing the constraints, he said there are many. Availability of corten steel, demand forecast (volumes), sources of corner castings, low level of automation, low level of containerization are some of the constraints in developing indigenous capacity for manufacture of containers in India.

Concor, the Railways PSU, owns about 37,500 containers and all of them are imported. Concor has recently placed orders for a total of 18,000 containers for Indian manufacturers.

According to the Concor, the idea is to develop capacity and capability to manufacture shipping grade containers in the country as a step towards Atmanirbhar Bharat. Focus is now on resolving the issues in consultation with stakeholders.

KCT is helping logistics players for import substitution and export of containers with a daily capacity of 12 containers. It got the order for ISO 20 ft Dry Cargo Containers in August and it has been successfully completed in 72 days.

Kalyani Cast Tech Limited has entered into container manufacturing as per international standards three years back and is approved for making corner casting, a critical component for container manufacturing.

KCT has innovated, designed, developed and supplied various kinds of special containers such as dwarf containers, cube containers, 25 ft ISO containers, 42 ft coil containers, bulk containers etc. in order to help customers to reduce cost of transportation.