Indian Railways has taken an initiative of transporting raw materials like yarn, fabric and goods from Ludhiana’s textile and garment companies directly by train to Bangladesh.
Besides being very cost effective for the industry, low volume will also be now easily sent to Bangladesh.
Railway’s Ambala division in collaboration with MGH Group has started this facility and for the first time Indian Railways has loaded a special parcel train full of cotton yarn beyond the country borders to Benapole in Bangladesh from Ambala Cantt station.
This train, which consists of 20 parcel vans (VPU), was flagged off on 27 June in the presence of senior railway officials at Ambala.
Each VPU was loaded with 430 cartons, weighing around 23 tonnes and the total weight carried by the special parcel express is around 468 tonnes.
According to Railways, the customers opting for this facility will get end-to-end transportation solutions like exporting yarn, fabrics and FMCG from their respective factories across Ludhiana and Baddi to their clients’ garment factories in Bangladesh including the customs clearance on both the sides of border.
Ludhiana is a textile hub having well-known textile companies like Garg Acrylic, Nahar Spinning, Vardhman Textiles, Aarti International and Cedaar Textiles that have business with Bangladesh.
It is pertinent to mention here that earlier the textile companies in and around Punjab & Haryana were transporting commodities like yarn, fabrics & goods by road to Bangladesh in small quantities and at very high freight cost.
During the lockdown period, they were unable to transport these by road and it was then Railway staff and officials approached the consignors and explained them about the facilities to transport by rail.
Accordingly, they have moved the cotton yarn by rail in bulk through goods trains, but for moving the consignment by Goods trains, it is mandatory for the farmers and merchants to mobilise the quantity in bulk.
To mitigate this problem and to facilitate the rail users to move their quantities in small like up to a maximum of 500 tonnes in each trip, Ambala Division of Northern Railway took the initiative and started the special parcel train to Bangladesh. This has helped the merchants to market their products beyond the country border by transporting the cotton yarn in small quantities through special parcel train.
The cost per tonne for carrying by special parcel train is Rs. 5,491 and which is very cheap and economical as compared to road transport which is much higher.
This will be the first-of-its-kind traffic from Northern Railway catering the yarn industry of Northern India and earned the freight of Rs 25 lakh.
Sunil Tangri, commercial head, Vardhman Textiles, Ludhiana is of the view that the train service will help the whole textile industry in this region to commit to stringent delivery schedule and that in turn will increase India’s exports and boost economic trade between two neighbouring countries.
Bharat Tex Special Report 2026 
