In an initiative aimed at reducing delays and costs, the V O Chidambaranar Port in Thoothukudi on Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) to facilitate Direct Port Entry (DPE) of cargo.
Madurai:
The MoU was signed by TK Ramachandran, Chairman, VOC Port, and Arun Kumar Shrivastava, Managing Director, CWC, in the presence of N Vaiyapuri, Deputy Chairman of Port and other senior officials.
Ramachandran said the DPE facility would benefit exporters by speeding up the flow of cargo across various logistics service providers, decrease the logistics cost and reduce the dwell time of export container as well.
The CWC with domain knowledge and expertise in the field of operations and management of cargo terminals is expected to provide efficient service to exporters at a reasonable cost, he said.
According to an official statement, the MoU would allow CWC to use 18,357 sqm area earmarked in the truck parking terminal to operate and manage the DPE facility on an annual lease rental basis for 30 years.
The DPE facility would enable the direct movement of containers from factories without intermediate handling at any container freight station (CFS), thus facilitating the port users to sned their factory-stuffed goods (self-sealed) directly to the container terminal round the clock.
Currently, the factory-stuffed containers are taken to 15 container freight stations and one inland container depot operated in Thoothukudi.
Except one CFS, which operates round the clock, all the others function between 10 am and 5 pm. The closing time is extended to 8pm on working days.
With the DPE facility being set up, there would be a faster export clearance of factory-stuffed containers, while both the time and cost incurred would get reduced.