ICD Tughlakabad (INTKD6) — Delhi’s dry port, explained

Scapex books, clears and follows through at ICD Tughlakabad ourselves, so accountability for your shipment does not change hands at the gate.

Gateway details

What we handle at ICD Tughlakabad

• Booking and equipment release against a named vessel or flight
• Inland haulage from the factory, by road or rail
• Customs filing, examination coordination and follow-through
• Rail movement between the depot and the coastal gateway
• Inland clearance, which often removes a day of port congestion
• Factory stuffing under customs supervision where the commodity allows it

Why clear inland rather than at the port

An inland depot moves the paperwork away from the gateway queue. On the northern lanes it also lets the container travel by rail on the dedicated freight corridor, which is usually cheaper than road above roughly 700 kilometres and is not affected by the seasonal trucking crunch around Diwali and the March year end.

What ICD Tughlakabad is — and why people call it a port

ICD Tughlakabad is an inland container depot in south-east Delhi, run by Container Corporation of India (CONCOR). It is not on the sea. It is a customs station where an export container is cleared, sealed and put on a train to a seaport, and where an import container arrives by rail from the port still under customs control and is cleared in Delhi rather than at the coast. That is why the trade calls it “Tughlakabad port” and why it has a customs code of its own, even though no ship has ever called at it.

It opened in 1993 and CONCOR describes it as the largest dry port in the country. For north Indian exporters and importers it remains the default inland gate, and most of the questions about it come down to four things: the code you file against, how the rail leg works, which seaport your box is actually going to, and what it costs to leave a container sitting there.

The code you file against

The customs location code is INTKD6. The 6 at the end marks an inland container depot, as against 1 for a seaport and 4 for an air cargo station. That code goes on the shipping bill or bill of entry, and your AD code has to be registered at this station before the first filing here. A registration at Nhava Sheva or Mundra does nothing for a filing at Tughlakabad, and a document filed against the wrong location is refiled, not corrected.

The depot’s postal address carries the PIN code 110020 (Okhla / Tughlakabad, New Delhi). The PIN is for the address on a letter or a transport document; it is not the customs code, and the two get confused on forms more often than you would expect.

How an export moves through it

1. Shipping bill filed against INTKD6, with the seaport of loading declared correctly. The depot is the place of clearance; the seaport is where the box is loaded onto the vessel.
2. Stuffing either at your factory under self-sealing permission with an e-seal, or at the depot itself. Factory stuffing saves handling; depot stuffing is how part-loads and consolidations are done.
3. Examination where the risk system calls for it, followed by the let-export order.
4. Rail to the seaport on a scheduled rake. The container travels under customs control, and the shipping bill is already cleared by the time it gets to the coast.
5. Gate-in at the port terminal and loading on the booked vessel.

The step that catches people is step four. A rake has its own cut-off, and it sits days ahead of the vessel cut-off. A container that misses the rake it was planned on will usually miss the vessel as well, however much time appears to be left before the sailing. Plan to the rail cut-off, not to the ship.

How an import comes in

An import only arrives at Tughlakabad if it was booked to arrive there. The bill of lading has to show the ICD as the place of delivery. The carrier then files the manifest at the seaport with the container marked for onward movement, and it travels by rail to Delhi under bond for clearance here.

If the bill of lading shows only the seaport, the container is treated as a port delivery. Moving it inland afterwards is possible, but it is a separate process with its own paperwork and cost, and the days spent arranging it count against the free period. If you import into Delhi regularly, the delivery point on the bill is the first thing to get right with your supplier and the line.

After arrival the sequence is the usual one: bill of entry, assessment, duty payment, examination if called, out-of-charge, then delivery by road. Our customs clearance page sets it out in full.

Which seaport your box actually goes to

From Tughlakabad the rail leg runs to the west coast — principally Mundra, Pipavav and Nhava Sheva. Which one is right is not a question of distance alone:

• Mundra and Pipavav are usually the shorter and more predictable rail runs from north India, and carry most of the main trades.
• Nhava Sheva has the widest carrier and service spread in India, which matters on thin lanes where a Gujarat port has no direct call. See our Mumbai page for why.

The right answer is the port with a direct sailing on your trade and a rake that connects to it. We price both routings rather than defaulting to one. Our Mundra and Pipavav pages compare them on total landed cost.

Tughlakabad, Dadri, Patparganj or Garhi Harsaru

Delhi NCR has several inland depots and the nearest one to the factory is not automatically the right one.

• Tughlakabad (INTKD6) — the largest and oldest, inside the city, with the widest range of rake services.
• Dadri (INDER6) — in Greater Noida on the western dedicated freight corridor, suited to the eastern side of NCR.
• Patparganj (INPPG6) — East Delhi, garments and general cargo.
• Garhi Harsaru (INGHR6) — the Gurugram and Manesar auto belt.

We file our own entries at Tughlakabad and Dadri. At Patparganj and Garhi Harsaru the work runs through an appointed broker under a Scapex file, so you still deal with one desk. How the road leg into south-east Delhi fits with city entry timings for heavy vehicles is worth confirming on the day, because it decides whether a factory-stuffed box makes the gate in time.

What it costs to leave a container here

The depot operator publishes a consolidated tariff covering handling, storage, ground rent and ancillary services. The line charges detention on its own equipment separately. The two run on different clocks and are billed by different parties, which is why a delayed import can produce two invoices for the same days. Our demurrage and detention page explains both. For how an inland move shows up on a freight quotation, see what a freight forwarder charges.

What goes wrong here

• AD code registered at the seaport but not at INTKD6. The first shipping bill stops until it is fixed.
• Import booked to the seaport instead of the ICD. The box stops at the coast and the free days start running.
• Planning to the vessel cut-off instead of the rake cut-off. The commonest reason a Delhi export rolls to the next sailing.
• Confusing the PIN code with the customs code on a form.
• Choosing the depot by distance instead of by the rake services that connect to your sailing.

Where to check the official position

• ICEGATE — location codes, AD code registration and the status of a filed shipping bill or bill of entry.
• CONCOR — the depot operator’s own tariff, rake services and terminal notices.
• CBIC — the notifications and circulars behind assessment, examination and self-sealing.

Tariffs, rake schedules, cut-offs and free periods change. Nothing here is a quotation; confirm the current position for your shipment on the day.

Tracking a shipment through ICD Tughlakabad

Once a bill of lading or air waybill is issued, follow it on our tracking page. It reads the reference, works out which carrier issued it, and takes you to their own live milestones.