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Informist, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025

 

By Avishek Rakshit

 

KOLKATA – Diversified public sector enterprise Balmer Lawrie Co. Ltd. is looking to substantially expand its warehousing capacity in the next two years to 1 million square feet and come up with two new major hub and spoke terminals across the country, Chairman and Managing Director Adhip Nath Palchaudhuri said Thursday.

 

The company currently has one mother warehousing terminal at Dankuni in West Bengal comprising 150,000 square feet. On behalf of its clients, Balmer Lawrie will be transporting goods from this terminal to other secondary terminals in Siliguri in West Bengal, Bhubaneswar in Odisha, and Guwahati in Assam. Other tertiary terminals in Ranchi in Jharkhand, Patna in Bihar, and Shillong in Meghalaya are also expected to come up. "A substantial part of these terminals are expected to come up in the next financial year," Palchaudhuri told media persons while responding to a question from Informist in a press conference.

 

Under the hub and spoke model, the mother hub, or the main and largest terminal, ships goods to secondary terminals via its own dedicated chain of transport. The secondary terminals supply the goods to their destination and also forward the goods to tertiary hubs, which are smaller in size.

 

"We plan to have at least two more such warehouses under the hub and spoke model comprising 1 million square foot in the next two years," Palchaudhuri said.  

 

Asked about the likely locations, Palchaudhuri said that these can come up anywhere in the country across the three remaining zones, ie. North India, West India, and South India. The location for the two upcoming hubs will be decided based on the customers which Balmer Lawrie may acquire in the coming years, he said. While West India, which includes commercial centres has the largest requisite eco-system in place, South India presents opportunities in the automotive sector and the rapid flow of investments in Andhra Pradesh which is opening up new opportunities, the top company official said. At the same Uttar Pradesh is also drawing in industries and consumption in Delhi NCR is on the rise, Palchaudhuri said.

 

Gradually adjusting itself towards an asset-lite model, Balmer Lawrie is looking for warehouses in India which are ready to move in or are in an advanced stage of completion for the secondary and tertiary warehouses.

 

"Our Dankuni warehouse operates on the Build To Suite model and there is no reason why we would not consider this model for the upcoming two other hubs," Palchaudhuri said. "Under this model, we will not have to bear any substantial capital expenditure as investments will have to be borne mostly in setting up the equipment and technology."

 

In the real-estate industry, a build to suit model refers to a strategy where a property is custom-built to meet the specific design and operational requirements of a single tenant, who then occupies the property under a long-term lease.

 

Warehousing, which is part of the company's logistics infrastructure vertical, usually accounts for 9.5% of the company's annual revenue and the logistics services vertical, which transports goods from warehouses apart from other services accounts for 18% of the annual revenue.

 

At 1353 IST, shares of Balmer Lawrie traded 0.7% down at INR 210.40 on the National Stock Exchange.

 

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

 

Edited by Deepshikha Bhardwaj

 

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