Warehousing — one of the fast-developing segments despite an economic slowdown and the pandemic — has been recording growth of over 44% in the last three years.
Expansions in the e-commerce and manufacturing industries (especially pharma) have triggered the growth of warehousing, estimated to achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of ~14.86% between 2021 and 2025, reaching a value of INR 2,028.86 billion by 2025.
Equally contributing to this growth are multifold factors: government policies (Production-Linked Incentive Scheme) supporting and increasing institutional investments, rising demand for e-commerce, supply chain disruption due to the pandemic and international manufacturing moving out of China to India. The overall industrial and warehousing space stock is expected to increase by 21% to 278 million sq ft in 2021 as compared with 230 million sq ft last year.
Correspondingly, the expanding warehousing segment has increased demand for cleaning products, solutions and services; a new market spread across tier-I, tier-II and tier-III cities. Presently, warehousing in India is mostly concentrated in tier-I cities, such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Ahmedabad, Pune, and Hyderabad. With the rising demand for e-commerce activities and doorstep delivery services, warehousing has expanded into tier-II and tier-III cities. Some of the prominent locations include Chandigarh, Rajpura, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Raipur, Patna, Bhubaneshwar, Surat, Vadodara, Indore, Coimbatore, Vizag, Vijayawada, Kochi and others.
The Clean India Journal editorial team set out to understand warehousing and the extent of cleaning required for seamless supply chain operations. More popularly referred to as godowns, warehouses are also known as fulfilment centres or storehouses or even grain banks, as in the case of agricultural products.
Warehouse areas range from anywhere between 250 sq ft to 65,000 sq ft and more. Equipped with intricately planned storage facilities, well-established racks, multi-level stacks, uniquely coded shelves and shiftable trolleys, facilities management in warehouses requires a pattern, adaptability and customisation at every premise. This in turn has brought in a requirement for specialised cleaning services for as simple a job as cobweb removal.
Mrigank Warrier, Assistant Editor, Clean India Journal, takes a deep-dive into warehouse cleaning and maintenance in the first of a two-part story on warehousing, featuring robotics, IoT, sophisticated machines, digital solutions and more.
- Contract service providers for efficient warehouse FM Read More
- Expanding the scope of warehouse FM Read More
- Mechanised cleaning for diverse warehouse areas Read More
- Auditing warehouse cleaning requirements Read More
- Digital backbone of warehousing FM Read More
