PSA kicks off new Indian rail route

PSA India has launched a new direct southern rail connection linking Mumbai to Cochin in Southwestern India.

The new service provides a plethora of services – including the transportation of Direct Port Delivery (DPD) boxes from PSA Mumbai to Deshabhimani Publications’ factory in Cochin, returning the destuffed empty containers to Mumbai before trucking to an empty container depot at Nhava Sheva.

The company said this multimodal solution was established to service the needs of Deshabhimani Publications, a major Indian paper importer.

READ: PSA European rail link hits 1,000 TEU milestone

The maiden rail freight service carried 40 FEU (forty-foot equivalent units) of cargo from PSA Mumbai to the India Gateway Terminal (IGT) in Cochin.

The new route reduces transit time to the end factory in Cochin from around 70 days to 40 days from the port of origin in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In addition to bolstering key rail corridors between north and central India and PSA Mumbai, the new service offers a more sustainable solution enabling lower carbon emissions.

PSA International was crowned as the leading container throughput terminal operator according to Drewry’s latest Global Container Terminal Operators Annual Review and Forecast report.

Processing 63.4 million TEU last year, the operator was tailed by APM Terminals (which saw a massive 10.3 per cent increase in box throughput) and COSCO Shipping, processing 50.4 million TEU and 49 million TEU respectively.