By Fidelis Ugbomeh
As part of efforts to reduce port congestion and maximize use of railway to convey bulky and containerised cargoes in and out of the Lagos port, Bueno Logistics Limited has in collaboration with key players in Maritime domain concluded plans to commence evacuation of goods destined for other parts of the country from Lagos to Ibadan next year.
Based on the proposed arrangement, the Containers will be evacuated from Lagos port by rail to Moniya, at Ibadan and later offloaded inti trucks for onward movement by road to their various destinations in the country.
Director of Operations, Bueno Logistics Limited, Mr. Paul Ndibe who dropped this hint in an exclusive interview with Daily Sun in Lagos recently advised the terminal operators to grant waiver on goods designated for conveyance by rail so as to encourage importers and agents to use the railway mode to convey their consignments to Ibadan or freight stations within Lagos and environs.
He stated that this feat can only be achieved if stakeholders including terminal operators, shipping companies, state governments, truck owners and Nigerian Railway Corporation harmonise their views towards enhancing carriage of bulky goods on a long distance by rail.
While calling on the state governments to construct roads linking train stations for seamless transit of goods from wagons to trucks, he said the terminal operators should grant incentives to importers/agents so as to enhance use of railway and by extension reduce cost of goods in the open market
He explained further that it is cheaper to convey goods by railways compared to roads adding that a single train rack can convey 1,380 tons of dry cargoes and 70 Teu’s of 40 footer containers as against 46 trailers and 35 trailers required respectively to move the same tonnage of goods by road.
“Going by the aforementioned statistics on the tonnage of cargoes/containers that can be conveyed by a single train compared to the number of trailers, you can imagine the number of trailers that will be removed from the roads if policy is skewed to encourage carriage of goods from Lagos and other ports by rail,” Ndibe said.
According to him, intermodal transport can only be effectively applied at A.P. Moller Terminal because it has access to three modes including rail, road and water but that evacuation of containers and other categories of goods from the terminal is skewed in favour of the road mode.
The director of operations posited that encouraging evacuation of containers by rail/barges, will create more space, flexibility, reduce dwell time, clearing time and port congestion.