Trade and industry has since long been demanding consolidation of LCL cargoes at either the gateway ports or the CFSs' operating near the gateway ports for further despatch to the destination points. The ministry of finance, in a circular issued recently, had accepted the proposal of the industry and has decided to allow the facility of congregation of LCL cargo at the inland ICDs/CFSs, movement of this cargo from those places to the nearest hub points for further reworking and exports to the destination points, said Rajnish Kumar, deputy general manager, CONCOR speaking to The Financial Express . ``Once the notification from the government appointing CONCOR as the hub point for consolidation of LCL cargoes is received we will be able to start providing this service,'' he said and added that this is expected in a couple of days time.

However, the company is currently working on preparing the rate structure for this service. This is also expected to be finalised in the next few days. Since this is a new service which the company will be providing, it will look at tieing up with private operators who are already in the business and also with people associated with the business such as the shipping lines. CONCOR is planning to allot nearly 25,000 sq. ft space in its warehouse for handling LCL cargoes. The total area of the existing warehouse is about 160,000 sq.ft. Based on the demand for these services the company will also look at constructing a separate warehouse over a period of time for handling these services.