Container Crunch
11% Year-on-year decline in container traffic across major Indian ports in April-December 2020
Over the past four-five months, Patton International, a Kolkata-based electrical conduit fittings manufacturer, has been sending, on average, two container loads of goods every day by road to Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai. The decision to skip Kolkata port next door and get consignments transported 2,000 kilometres by road to Mumbai shows desperation arising out of acute shortage of containers at Kolkata port and prevailing uncertainty over the transit time to the final destination, the US.
“Our containers used to get loaded at Kolkata and go to Colombo for transhipment to Europe and the US. Post the pandemic, our goods began to take 90-100 days to reach the US through this route. Shortage of containers, and congestion at Colombo port,
