Planning and Implementation Support for Commercialisation of India's National Waterway 1

Challenge

Since the beginning of 2017, HPC has advised the National Inland Waterway Authority of India (IWAI) on implementing inland waterway transport on the National Waterway-1, which includes large parts of the river Ganges. India has a millennia-long culture of using their holy river, the Ganges, for cultural, social and economic purposes. The transport of containers represented a significant new step in developing inland waterway transport on India's National Waterway-1.

Tasks Performed

• Improvement of inland waterway utilisation to facilitate actual business development and to ensure that freight on NW-1 being moved onto inland vessels
• Active involvement of identified shippers and potential vessel operators, as well as logistics stakeholder by one-to-one interactions and B2B meetings
• Development of customer-specific logistic solutions involving IWT
• Arrangement of pilot movements
• Elaboration of documents of multilateral long-term agreements involving shippers and vessel operators

Benefit 

With a local partner, HPC brought shippers and inland waterway operators together in this still-young market and organised the loading and pre- and post-carriage to the loading points. The shipment of sixteen 20' containers for a large beverage producer from Kolkata in eastern India to Varanasi (about 1,400 km away) was organised for the first time. HPC had already been involved in the feasibility study for this terminal in 2015. Prime Minister Modi and the Minister of Transport, Gadgarin, received the transport as part of the opening of India’s first inland container terminal in Varanasi on November 11, 2018.