Govt mulls water transport after fruit, veggie exports dip

To fine-tune the export strategy, the Agriculture and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda) has started experimenting with the transport of perishable commodities to different countries by low-cost shipments. And it has succeeded in shipping 10 tonnes of bananas from Kochi to Dubai, which reduced transportation charges by a sixth as compared to airfreight. 

“We have started the new practice with bananas. Last week, we shipped 10 tonnes of bananas to Dubai in a controlled environment in a week’s time. It cost the exporter just Rs 10 per kg while the airfreight would have been Rs 60 per kg,” said Apeda Chairman DK Singh.

“We are also going to send one more consignment soon. We are trying to develop a sea protocol for shipping bananas. Once we establish it, the water transport mode will be introduced for other fruits and vegetables.” Incidentally, Apeda has been using water transport for export of non-perishable products such as basmati rice and processed items but it could not be used for perishable items due to their very short shelf-life. 

Apeda says export of fresh fruits went up in 2015-16 by almost 40 per cent to 7,98,755 tonnes compared to the previous year. It went down by almost 80 per cent to 1,65,103 in 2016-17.