FM Logistic India plans to invest Rs 180 crore in intra-city warehousing

With its recent plans to convert closed mills of Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru into intra-city warehouses, Pune-based FM Logistic India has drawn up a holistic plan for the domestic market recharging every nodal of the warehousing and distribution network. 
 

“FM (Logistic) will be investing 20 million euros (Rs 180.4 crore) in the next few years on intra-city warehousing alone. A part of it would be allotted to development of urban logistics centres where closed mills could be used as storage points. A focus point will be technology and last-mile delivery flow optimisation and organisation,” Alexandre Amine Soufiani, managing director, FM India Supply Chain, told Business Standard in an emailed interaction. The French 3PL (third-party logistics) player made a foray into the domestic market after acquiring Pune-based warehousing firm Spear Logistics in 2016.

Despite the challenging business environment in 2020 due to the pandemic, FM Logistic was able to build its revenue stream as it signed many new customers. It added 1 million square feet warehousing footprint in the country and signed some long-term strategic businesses. “In the coming three years, the company is set to add 4 million square feet pan India in to the warehousing portfolio of A+ grade infrastructure spread into major logistics market for multi-client usage and dedicated customer centric locations,” said Soufiani. It has over 4.5 million square feet of warehousing space at 40 locations in the country.

Grade-A warehouses offer lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TOC) for the development. Due to its high operational efficiency parameter, Grade-A warehouses are preferred by consumers. However, high cost of land sometimes becomes a challenge for companies interested in setting up Grade A warehouses.

The strong investment plan of the company, too, has its own hurdles. “The global level skillset in the supply chain domain is very rare in India. The main challenge we foresee is to source, train, and develop new collaborators, to organise efficient inductions of them, make them fully adopt and adhere to highest standards of safety, security, compliance, continuous improvement and collaborate in teams to give FM an edge in the market,” said Soufiani.

The company has employee strength of 4,000 deployed in warehousing units to intra-city value-added services.

To combat the situation, FM Logistic has designed a long-term HR strategy, and has created FM Logistic Academy to train all collaborators.