How Maersk helped one of India’s largest conglomerates to keep its supply chain moving during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Background
Our customer is one of India's largest conglomerates with a foothold in energy, petrochemicals, textiles, retail and the telecommunications sectors. With the implementation of a nationwide lockdown to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the company saw the local demand for its polymer business fall to zero. So, they decided to shift their focus from local businesses to exports to other countries.
Since polymers are manufactured by a continuous process that is difficult to stop and restart, the factories had to remain open— especially the world’s largest refinery complex which the customer housed in Jamnagar, India. They required support to manage the massive surge in export volumes due to the lockdown.
The challenge
The precious cargo transportation became difficult as road movement in India was halted in the early days of the lockdown. This led to a lack of trucking transportation which ultimately hindered the steady supply of equipment from the terminals into their plant and the movement of laden boxes back to terminals. With export volumes increasing from 2500 FFE to 10,000 FFE, arranging equipment where there was no established volume allocation with carriers was a challenge.
The Maersk solution
Maersk’s solution included changing the method of cargo transportation from road to rail during the lockdown. We also offered to arrange extra capacity to carry the cargo and ramped up the intermodal supply to the customer’s plant from 1 train rake per week to 5 trains per day. We supplied over 200 rakes of rail cargo transportation capacity to keep their supply chain on track.
Further, to ensure a consistent supply of containers, we arranged an extra ocean loader into APMT Pipavav Terminal to solely support their supply chain needs which brought empty equipment and loaded export laden boxes to Far-East destinations.
The result
With our end-to-end solutions, our customer was able to keep their refinery open by navigating the supply chain problems with coronavirus. They were also able to
Continuous cargo movement
Efficient container loading
Saving costs
Meeting customer needs
Fulfilling demands
Hassle-free coordination
Prioritising safety
Customer testimonial
We would like to thank the entire Maersk team for the exemplary support that has been offered 24x7 during this tough period of Covid19 lockdown situation. We have come this far to keeping the supply chain and Economy churning only thanks to your support and we are confident that together we can jointly tide over these unchartered waters!
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