Gateway Distriparks is expected to be the biggest winner of efforts in India to expand the nation's container handling facilities, given the company operates a number of container freight stations close to major ports.
Gateway Distriparks owns and manages container freight stations at Dronagiri near Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT), Navi Mumbai and New Manali, Chennai. It also has an inland container depot at Garhi Harsaru near Delhi.
The Navi Mumbai CFS has helped the company garner more than five per cent market share of JNPT's container traffic. Gateway's terminal at Chennai has an annual capacity of 90,000 TEU. In FY08, the Chennai CFS handled 57,000 TEU.
This comes as JNPT's fourth container terminal is expected to be operational in two years. Furthermore, the recent acquisition of Punjab Conway's CFS has added an annual capacity of 150,000 TEU to Gateway's existing 200,000 TEU, according to a report by The Economic Times of India.
Gateway also plans to develop new inland container depots at Ludhiana and Faridabad next year, while it has recently invested INR350 crore (US$$8.2 billion) in freight trains via its subsidiary Gateway Rail Freight.
The report concluded that as India's container trade has been growing 15-20 per cent a year with revenue growth of container freight stations dependent on the rising throughput of JNPT.
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