Gateway Rail Freight Ltd (GRFL), the container train operating subsidiary of Gateway Distriparks Ltd, a Mumbai-based logistics firm, is unlikely to buy any wagons this fiscal. Rather, it is likely to consider leasing wagons from the market, which has an oversupply, said Sachin Bhanushali, President, GRFL, in a conference call.
He said GRFL was looking to lease wagons for two to five years. As of now, there are two American firms in the wagon leasing market — GATX and Touax. The company has 21 train sets in the market, of which 18 are under operation.
Bhanushali said the company would like to wait for the Railways to finalise the design of new lighter wagons before they buy new wagons, adding that the payload per wagon will be 75 tonnes against 61 tonnes at present.
Currently, private container train operators own about 135-140 rakes, while Container Corporation of India (Concor) owns 285 rakes. Concor recently said it planned to procure 20 rakes in the current fiscal, up from eight last fiscal.
For the first quarter of current fiscal, Indian Railways carried almost 12 million tonnes of container load, about 1.6 mt more than the corresponding period last year.