Pepsico (India) debuts on Inland Waterway-1 with 16 containers
30 Oct 2018
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Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) will transport container cargo belonging to the food and beverage giant PepsiCo (India) from Kolkata to Varanasi on river Ganga (National Waterway-1) today, marking the country’s first container movement on inland vessel post-Independence.
PepsiCo (India) will move 16 containers – equivalent to 16 truckloads of food and snacks - in the vessel MV RN Tagore, which will reach Varanasi in 9-10 days. MV RN Tagore will make its return journey with fertilizers belonging to IFFCO that will be procured from its Phulpur plant near Allahabad.
The event coincides with another milestone of IWAI’s foray into public private partnership (PPP) model becoming a reality with the handing over of operation and management of its terminals in Kolkata to Summit Alliance Port East Gateway (India) Pvt Ltd (SAPEL) on a supply, operate and maintain (SOM) model.
Container cargo transport comes with several inherent advantages. Even as it reduces the handling cost, allows easier modal shift, reduces pilferages and damage, it also enables cargo owners to reduce their carbon footprints.
The government is developing NW-1 (River Ganga) under JMVP from Haldia to Varanasi (1390 Km) with the technical and financial assistance of the World Bank at an estimated cost of Rs5,369 crore. The project would enable commercial navigation of vessels with capacity of 1,500-2,000 DWT.
Union minister for shipping Nitin Gadkari had flagged off a consignment of Maruti cars from Varanasi to Haldia in August 2016. Since then pilot movements on National Waterways are currently being done on various stretches. More than 15 of them have already been successfully completed, including integrated movements through NW-1 (Ganga), Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route and NW-2 (Brahmaputra). The PepsiCo cargo will be the first commercial container movement on inland waterways in the country.
