Freight forwarder in Delhi NCR — inland depots and the air gate

Scapex moves cargo out of Delhi NCR through Mundra and Nhava Sheva, by rail from Tughlakabad or Dadri ICD, with the inland leg, the clearance and the ocean or air booking handled on one file.

Getting cargo out of Delhi NCR

On this lane rail beats road on both cost and predictability, and it is not affected by the seasonal trucking crunch. Clearing at an inland depot rather than at the port usually saves a day.

What ships from here

Delhi NCR and its surrounding belt export apparel, handicrafts, engineering goods, auto components and leather. Each of those has its own documentation and packing requirements, and we plan around the one that applies rather than the generic case.

Delhi has no port, and that is the whole planning problem

Everything that leaves the National Capital Region by sea leaves through somebody else’s port, roughly 1,100 to 1,400 kilometres away on the west coast. What NCR has instead is a ring of inland container depots where the customs work is done, and a rail network that carries the sealed container to the ship. Get the depot and the rake right and the distance costs you nothing you did not plan for. Get them wrong and the cargo sits, fully cleared, waiting for a train.

The four depots, and which one is yours

• ICD Tughlakabad (INTKD6) — in south-east Delhi, the largest and oldest, with the widest range of rake services. The default for most of the region.
• ICD Dadri (INDER6) — in Greater Noida, on the western dedicated freight corridor, and the natural gate for the eastern side of NCR.
• ICD Patparganj (INPPG6) — east Delhi, garments and general cargo.
• ICD Garhi Harsaru (INGHR6) — Gurugram and Manesar, serving the auto belt.

Choose by the rake services that connect to your sailing, not by the kilometres from your factory. A depot twenty minutes closer is no use if the service you need leaves from the other one. We file our own customs entries at Tughlakabad and Dadri; at Patparganj and Garhi Harsaru the filing runs through an appointed broker under a Scapex file, so you still deal with one desk either way.

The rail cut-off is your real deadline

An export from NCR has two clocks. The rake cut-off at the depot comes first, and the vessel cut-off at the port comes days later. A container that misses its planned rake will usually miss the vessel it was booked on, however much time appears to be left before the sailing. Every date we quote out of Delhi is built backwards from the rake, not the ship.

On this lane rail also beats road on cost and on predictability, and it is not exposed to the seasonal trucking crunch. Clearing inland rather than at the gateway usually saves a day as well, because examination happens near your own people rather than several hundred kilometres away with a cut-off running.

Which west coast gateway

From NCR the rail leg runs mainly to Mundra, Pipavav and Nhava Sheva. Mundra and Pipavav are usually the shorter and more predictable runs; Nhava Sheva carries the widest carrier and service spread in India, which matters on thin trades where the Gujarat ports have no direct call. The right answer is the port with a direct sailing on your trade and a rake that connects to it, and we price the alternatives rather than defaulting to one.

Imports only reach Delhi if the bill of lading says so

An import clears at an NCR depot only when the bill of lading shows that depot as the place of delivery. If it names the seaport instead, the container is a port delivery, and moving it inland afterwards is a separate process with its own paperwork and cost while the free days run down. If you import into Delhi regularly, that one line on the bill is the thing to fix with your supplier and the shipping line.

When air out of Delhi is the honest answer

Delhi is the air gateway for the whole of north India, and for garments against a retail deadline, samples, high-value engineering parts and pharmaceuticals it is often the only answer that works. The airport has two cargo terminals and your airline decides which one handles your consignment; the details are on our Delhi air cargo page. We file our own entries there too. Air is charged on the higher of actual and volumetric weight, so measure the packed cartons before asking for a price — our CBM calculator does the arithmetic.

What the region ships

• Apparel and made-ups from the Noida, Gurugram and Okhla clusters, where the shipping deadline belongs to a retail season and slipping it costs more than the freight.
• Auto components from Gurugram and Manesar, where classification turns on what a part is for, and batteries and airbag modules are dangerous-goods checks to settle before booking.
• Handicrafts and home furnishings from Moradabad, Jodhpur and the wider belt feeding NCR, usually part-load cargo where consolidation decides the cost.
• Engineering goods and machinery, where the question is whether the piece still fits a container.
• Leather goods from the Kanpur and Agra side, where buyer-specified packing is part of the order.

How we work here

Scapex is an Ahmedabad company. We do not claim an office, a warehouse or staff in Delhi, and you would be right to be sceptical of anyone who lists branches in every city. What we do is file our own entries at Tughlakabad, Dadri and Delhi air cargo, run the booking and the follow-through on one file, and put the name of whoever is accountable for your shipment in front of you.

What goes wrong on this lane

• Planning to the vessel cut-off instead of the rake cut-off. The commonest reason a Delhi export rolls.
• AD code registered at one station only. Each depot and the air station are separate registrations.
• Import booked to the seaport rather than the ICD. The box stops at the coast and the free days start.
• Choosing the depot by distance instead of by the rake services that reach your sailing.
• Leaving automotive classification late. Entirely knowable in advance, and expensive when it is not.

Gateways and transit

Services available from Delhi NCR

• Ocean freight — Full container and part-container movements booked on contracted allocation, with the arithmetic done before you commit.
• Air freight — Airport-to-airport and door-to-door uplift, including temperature-controlled and dangerous-goods consignments.
• Customs clearance — Import and export clearance, classification, valuation support and scheme documentation.
• Road and rail — Factory collection, ICD haulage, and rail movement on the western dedicated corridor.
• Warehousing — Handling between the factory and the terminal, so a shipment leaves complete rather than in parts.
• Multimodal transport — Two or more modes on a single through document, planned around the date the cargo has to land.
• Project cargo — Route surveys, lashing plans, permits and terminal coordination for cargo that does not fit a box.