Chemical cargo moves from East to West Coast

Uni-feeder, a coastal shipping operator initiated the first ever Coastal movement of Mono Ethylene Glycol (MEG) from the Indian Oil Corporation facility in Paradip Port to Hazira port in Gujarat last week.

MEG is predominantly used as a raw material in the manufacture of polyester staple fibers, polyester filament yarns in the textile industry. It is also widely used by the chemical industry in products such as the coolant, break fluids and unsaturated polyester resin to name a few, as per a release.

A large quantity of MEG has been obtained by the textile industry on the west coast of India from the Indian Oil facility at Paradip located on the east coast in the last few years.

However, the transport of MEG has been associated with high logistics costs due to the lack of a Multimodal transportation alternative. Uni-feeder’s client India Oil Corporation had been looking for an alternate mode of transportation to manage the costs associated with the movement of MEG.

Uni-feeder understood the opportunity and presented a hybrid, cost-effective Multimodal supply chain solution to Indian Oil and their customers to create awareness regarding movement of MEG in ISO tanks. Its ISO tank containers are designed, tested and approved for the safe and efficient transportation of a broad range of liquid products such as MEG. While initially MEG was only transported through land, with this new solution, one can now use a hybrid model of inland and coastal transportation of the raw material.

This re-engineered, digitised, multimodal supply chain solution will help in drastically reducing logistics cost that impacts the competitiveness of the goods associated with MEG in the domestic market, the release emphasised.

The first vessel carrying 50 ISO tanks sailed from Paradip to Hazira on May 3.