Pipavav Car Exports Begin

NYK Line’s 59,217 gross ton roll on/roll off (Ro/Ro) vessel Grand Dahlia was the first vessel to call APM Terminals Pipavav s new car export facility, loading a cargo of 1,300 Indian-built small Ford sedans for shipment to Mexico. The facility was established in June after the port concluded an agreement with Japanese-based NYK subsidiary NYK Auto Logistics (NAL) India to accommodate finished car export services, and the construction of the new automobile services terminal. 

The 200-meter long, 33-meter wide Grand Dahlia, with a capacity of 6,500 vehicles, took on its cargo at the new NAL car terminal, which includes an 80,000 square meter (20 acre) automotive Ro/Ro stockyard, and a 4,400 square meter (one acre) staging area. The car terminal area is leased from Port Pipavav by NAL, which operates the facility and has the ability to process and load 250,000 vehicles annually. APM Terminals Pipavav also handles containers, dry bulk, and liquid bulk cargo operations, with direct double stack rail service to inland commercial and industrial centers.

Automotive exports are an important growing market for Indian passenger car manufacturing. A recently completed $1 billion Ford automobile and engine manufacturing facility in Sanand, Gujarat, approximately 300 km (186 miles) from Pipavav Port, has a production capacity of 240,000 cars and car engines each annually, with half destined for export. In the first 11 months of the Fiscal Year, Ford’s Indian automobile exports rose to 71,181m units, exceeding Ford’s domestic Indian car sales of 69,885 vehicles.

Also active in Gujarat State is the Ford Motor Company’s fellow US-based global rival General Motors, along with home-grown Indian-based Tata Motors. Japanese-based Suzuki Motors has announced the construction of a new auto manufacturing facility with an annual production capacity of 750,000 vehicles, projected to open in 2017. Gujarat thus joins the Delhi region and South India’s Bengaluru/Chennai corridor as India’s third automotive manufacturing cluster, and a new center of finished auto exports. Ford’s global manufacturing strategy includes tripling exports of its Indian-built cars, including the Aspire model compact sedan marketed to other emerging economies. Indian passenger car exports have grown by 60% over the past five years, exceeding 620,000 in 2014, surpassing China’s passenger car exports of 533,000 passenger vehicles.