The financial condition of India’s carriers has not deterred stakeholders from continuing—or even initiating—infrastructure projects that will help the aviation sector flourish.
     This time around, little India is waking up to the immense potential of air cargo.
     No longer limited to the metro cities, states in the west of India, like Gujarat and Maharashtra and even Madhya Pradesh in central India, are chalking out elaborate plans.
     The Gujarat government, for example, has revamped its aviation department. At the launch of the Gujarat civil aviation policy in June 2010, the government note pointed out that, “air cargo movement has grown by nearly 19 percent as compared to 10 percent and 9 percent of growth in shipping and railways. In the context of Gujarat, one of the most industrialized states in India, the government wishes to encourage private players to utilize the air-cargo route and include suitable provisions for making a world class cargo hub in Gujarat.”      According to that policy, the federal government tasked the newly-created Gujarat State Aviation Infrastructure Company Limited (GUJSAIL) for the development of aviation and related infrastructure in the state. Hence, the recent invitation for proposals from entrepreneurs to start cargo and passenger services within the state.
     One of the most industrialized states of the country, Gujarat has one of the fastest growing economies in India. According to a report that appeared in The Economist in July last year, the state’s infrastructure could be compared with that of Guangdong in China. The state not only has a better road network but also does not interfere with entrepreneurial corporations. This has led experts to comment that the state’s keenness to develop its aviation business augured well.
     Consider the facts: Gujarat accounts for 16 percent of India’s industrial output and 22 percent of its exports. While 11 airstrips across the state have been identified, the government has clearly specified the kind of aircraft that would be needed. According to Vipul Mitra, (left) who heads the state’s tourism and aviation departments, the federal government was working on a strategy to ensure long term sustainability of aviation services.
     Even as moves to start aviation services take place, plans that were drawn up to establish an air cargo hub for perishable goods at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport at Ahmedabad are fructifying.
     The airport’s cargo potential is healthy. Ahmedabad airport handles only two percent of the cargo from India. Of this, 44 percent is domestic cargo and 56 percent is international cargo.
     Piloted by the Gujarat Agro Industries, another federal government enterprise, the cargo hub is expected to cater to the huge quantities of pharma products, vegetables, fruits, and flowers that the state of Gujarat exports. While the airport is within easy reach of Middle Eastern countries, it will cater to the diaspora from Gujarat spread out all over the world. To begin with, the cargo hub will be able to take away a sizeable share of exports that are now being sent through Mumbai airport. In fact, around 40 percent of the vegetables sent out through Mumbai are from Gujarat. With the lack of space at Mumbai and the traffic gridlock around the airport that is an almost daily occurrence, perishables often cannot make it to their destinations.
     The Ahmedabad cargo complex—delayed for around two years because of land issues—is all set to start operations. With its three temperature-controlled cold storages (zero, minus zero and plus 10 degree) and X-ray machines, the cargo complex is, perhaps, one of the most modern in the country. Incidentally, Emirates picks up around 170 tonnes of cargo a week from Ahmedabad airport meant for the Middle East, U.S., and Europe and in November, another Middle Eastern airline—Etihad Airways—will start operations to Ahmedabad.
     Meanwhile, barely 200 km from Mumbai, cargo operations have recently started at Ojhar airport in Nashik. The airport is owned by HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, a government unit manufacturing aircraft for the Indian Air Force—the Nashik division builds the Sukhoi planes under license from its Russian makers) with private entrepreneur Clarion Solutions managing the cargo complex. Perhaps what is most special about the airport is that it can handle planes like the AN-124s. The cargo complex comprises two warehouses, an integrated packing center for perishables, cold storage, screening, unitizing, ground handling services for airlines, CCTV surveillance, bar-coding, labeling, and customs.

Announcing the start of cargo operations from Nasik's Ojhar airport: (L-R) Ganesh Krishnan, CEO, Clarion Solutions (Clarion is a subsidiary of Transworld Group, a leading coastal shipping operator in the country); V. Ramnarayan, Vice-Chairman, Transworld Group of Companies; and P. V. Deshmukh, MD, Hindustan Aeronautics.

      While this airport expects to take away at least 25 percent of the cargo handled by Mumbai airport every month, it will also cater to perishables including pharma products, automobile parts, and engineering products. Dubai-based Rus Aviation has been operating a flight a week to the Ojhar air cargo hub. The carrier could increase the frequency to three flights a week if customer response is good.
Tirthankar Ghosh

     Pirates of The Caribbean, Long John Silver, Peter Pan, and Erroll Flynn movies dating back to the early 1930s have popularized the image of pirates as fun and light-hearted characters.
     On Halloween, kids dress up in a pirate’s costume—eye-patch, plastic hook, and stuffed parrot perched on shoulder, with a lot of “Arg” and “Aye-aye!”.
     In America our idea of pirates feels purely fictional, fantastic, and nowhere near the reality of the modern day, historical, real-life version of pirates.
     It’s 2012, and a surging danger to high seas shipping is piracy.

     One sage was recently bemoaning the TSA’s decision to push on with 100 percent cargo screening later this year. He likened U.S. politicians and regulators to cowboys. Being English, his reference was to the UK’s ‘cowboy’ builder stereotype, the sort who can be relied upon only to make a hash of things, rather than to the Texan variety, which originally set up the entire regime.
     But while railing against what he calls the illogicality of introducing a system that will drive up supply chain costs when there is scant evidence that it will boost security, he did have the perspective to see that things could be worse.
     “At least we only have cowboys to contend with, it could be pirates,” he said.
     He was correct in the sense that the scourge of piracy takes a huge toll on ship operating costs. But the impact of piracy is not confined to the oceans; it affects us all.
     According to the International Maritime Bureau, there were some 168 pirate attacks worldwide this year and some 19 hijackings. While the incidence of pirate attacks is now spreading to West Africa, pirates based in Somalia on the East coast of Africa have staged most of the attacks. They are now attacking merchant ships up to 1,750 miles off the Somali coast deep into the Indian Ocean using mother vessels—usually hijacked fishing vessels—to launch skiffs manned by heavily armed gunmen to attack ships.
     A recent study by AT Kearney and the Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association found that the cost to the global economy of piracy totaled between $1.9 billion and $6.5 billion each year, with insurance and security premiums rising all the time. Those figures do not include the expense of keeping a large number of naval vessels running convoys and protecting vessels from pirates.
     Another study estimates that the excess premium on cargo transiting piracy regions has increased by between $25 and $100 per container in the past few years.
     Consider also that a single Very Large Crude Carrier—the type that braves the worst piracy areas en route from the Persian Gulf of the U.S., for example—typically carries around five percent of the daily global oil supply. Around 40 percent of the global oil trade passes through the Western Indian Ocean so the seizure of tankers (and the threat of attack) can have a very real impact on oil prices and fuel cost risk strategies.
     “Piracy is a huge issue and shipping has had to take security into their own hands because there is no political will to solve the issue,” said Capt. Kuba Szymanski, Secretary General of InterManager, which represents ship management companies. He said the work involved preparing a ship and its crew for 10 days in what is effectively a war zone, and it is a massive burden.
     “The range of pirates is increasing, and pirates elsewhere are looking at the success of those in Somalia and learning what works. We can see this in West Africa now,” he added.
     The human cost is all too real also, both for those employed on vessels as well as their families. Since 2007, pirates operating out of Somalia have held captive some 3,500 seafarers, and 62 have lost their lives. Many are beaten and tortured while in captivity while awaiting ransoms to be paid. Indeed, as you read this, Somali pirates are holding hostage some 13 vessels and 185 people.
     A Counter-Piracy Conference convened by the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and port operator DP World starts today in Dubai (June 27-28) and seeks to shine more light on the humanitarian impact of piracy. DP World has interviewed two seafarers held captive for 11 months and their families in a new video which truly brings homes the human tragedy of piracy (www.counterpiracy.ae under the Media tab).

     The documentary also speaks to a captain about to set sail through waters where pirates operate, and with the daughters of a captain who was hijacked with his crew more than 19 months ago and who is still being held. It makes for harrowing viewing (Click to view video).
     “The terrible impact of piracy on the lives of seafarers and their families is often buried in a debate that includes discussions about security guards on board vessels, the rising costs of piracy to shipping and trade, and where pirates should be tried and imprisoned,” said Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, DP World Chairman.
     “While that debate is necessary and important, we should not lose sight of the appalling humanitarian cost that directly affects seafarers who sail into a nightmare as they go about their daily work.”
     So when supply chains start creaking in December, try and remember that at least we’re only faced with tidying up the mess made by ‘cowboys.’ The shipping industry, and the brave men (mostly from poor countries in Asia) which man its vessels, face a far more serious threat.
SkyKing

Getting on swimmingly, UTi’s “Core Four” & supporter (L toR) Irfan Erdim, Seth Walker, Tuna Gursoy, Abdullah Yesil, and Hugo Duchemin.

     Four UTi Worldwide team members will cross from Asia to Europe, swimming the fast-flowing Bosporus strait to compete in the International Olympic Committee’s 24th annual Bosporus Cross-Continental Swim next month on July 15.
     Competing against more than a thousand other amateur swimmers, the four UTi athletes are racing to raise funds for Delivering Better Lives (DBL), UTi’s charitable foundation dedicated to delivering both emergency and sustained relief to disadvantaged communities across the globe.
     It’s no coincidence that Hugo Duchemin, Irfan Erdim, Tuna Gursoy, and Seth Walker will be swimming—instead of shipping—across the second-busiest strait in the world, famous for its weird currents and simultaneous two-way flow.
     They purposefully selected the four-mile endeavor because it’s the only swimming race in the world that connects two continents.
     “At UTi,” says swimmer Hugo Duchemin, “we have a passion for connecting the world, not only through our global supply chain, but also through our global network of volunteer UTi workers who want to better people’s lives in meaningful ways.
     “We’re trying to help them do that by raising funds for Delivering Better Lives.”
     To encourage more donations for current DBL projects and to thank the foundation for their tireless efforts, the Turkish team of UTi swimmers promises to complete the race on Sunday, a challenge that proved daunting in last year’s race due to backward currents and disorientation.
     "The commitment of these four team members makes us all realize that there are many ways we can help those less fortunate people in the world,” said Glenn Mills, DBL Executive Director.
     The Bosporus Cross-Continental Swimming Race, a social swim that began with just 68 athletes in 1989 and now includes thousands of amateur swimmers, operates under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee, with the slogan “Sports for Everyone.”
     Delivering Better Lives works to improve education, health, infrastructure, and housing to disadvantaged communities in those areas in which UTi does business. DBL projects range from building schools, orphanages, hospices, and bridges to supplying more than 60,000 books for a literacy program, shelter for abused girls, food for delivery, and musical instruments.
     We encourage our readers to support the Core Four http://www.deliveringbetterlives.org.
Geoffrey/Flossie

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