With this, CSIA’s cargo handling capacity will increase to 7 lakh tonne annually from around 4 lakh tonne at present
Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) on Tuesday announced the launch of a dedicated cargo terminal for bonded and heavy export cargo at city’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) which is one of the busiest airports in Asia.
With this, CSIA’s cargo handling capacity will increase to 7 lakh tonne annually from around 4 lakh tonne at present.
The airport operator expects the heavy cargo, which is mainly for international market, to grow at 10% over next few years backed on increase in exports from the country in general and western India in particular.
The heavy cargo includes machinery, non-perishable pharma, automobile, engineering products, etc. Likewise, light weight cargo (less than 15 kilogram), which caters mainly to domestic market, will see a growth of around 7% mostly on account of e-commerce logistics which form about 75-80 % of the total domestic cargo business of MIAL.
The export-light consignments will continue to be handled at the existing export terminal.
The new heavy cargo terminal is spread over 7,500 square metre, and can handle heavy, odd sized and bonded cargo.
“The new process management deployed, along with incremental export capacity, will reduce the dwell time to a considerable extent,” said an MIAL spokesperson.
“The new facility will complement the existing Export Zone by increasing efficiency through faster admittance of cargo, swift turnaround of vehicles and overall reduction in handling dwell time with new process management. With this additional facility, CSIA can now offload more than 50 trucks at a time,” said an airport insider. Earlier, the average offloading capacity was about 30 trucks.
The new heavy cargo terminal will be open for operations from December 14.
However, the industry experts operating out of CSIA claim that improving export facilities had been a long pending demand at CSIA as the business during the past few years had been shifting to other airports like Delhi and Chennai.
According to Ashish Pednekar, president of Brihanmumbai Custom House Agents Association (BCHAA), a trade body association, the development will help in improving the cargo business in Western India. There has been a long pending demand of the trade stakeholders to create a separate terminal for handling of over-dimensional cargos.
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