Concor charts out Rs.8,000 cr expansion

Container Corporation of India (Concor) will spend Rs.8,000 crore over five years to develop infrastructure, buy equipment and strengthen IT-enabled systems, Chairman and Managing Director V Kalyana Rama, said explaining that the capex plan for the next five years will be on the same lines as was the case of the past five years. However, since Concor has major plans to expand its warehousing spaces, investment will be higher with nearly Rs.8,000 crore. Funding will be through internal accruals. It plans to increase warehousing space by more than three times to nearly 15 million sq.ft over three-four years from the present 4 million sq.ft. It is developing nine facilities on the east coast. There is a plan to expand the number of warehouses to 100 by 2020 from the present 72 with all gateways connected as the endeavor is to evacuate as much as possible by rail. He further said the US has warehousing space of nearly 4.5 billion sq.ft while India has around 1.1 billion sq.ft. However, post GST, there will be a huge demand for warehousing space, and Concor is creating such facilities, he added.