Container Corporation of India has planned to launch four inland container depots (ICDs) during 2005-06. Apart from these four -- that are coming up at Bhopal, Jalandhar, Chandigarh and Mirzapur -- two others (Gurgaon and Udaipur) have also been planned though not necessarily meant to come up this year.

The ICDs proposed to be launched in the current fiscal will mainly cater to the international traffic, except the one to be located at Bhopal, which will handle both domestic and international.

Background: Concor has 55 ICDs all over the country. Twenty-nine of these ICDs are combined -- catering to both international and domestic traffic while another 18 handle only international traffic. Concor also operates the Birgunj ICD in Nepal, being run by a joint venture company in which Concor has majority stake.

Meanwhile, Concor's cold storage facility chain is being revived. One unit of the chain is coming up near Delhi and should be ready for operations by the second quarter of 2006-07, it is learnt. Physical work on the Delhi facility, which would mainly cater for fruit growers of Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Jammu & Kashmir, will begin in the next couple of months.

ProjectsToday adds: In February 2005, there were unconfirmed reports about Concor shelving its plans of developing the cold storage chain with private sector participation. It now appears that Concor is going ahead solo with the plan.