MUMBAI: The spread of Covid-19 has made business tougher for domestic ports and logistics firms, which were already grappling with slow earnings growth.

At present, sectors like warehousing, trucking, and last-mile delivery, are facing several challenges. Labour shortage has turned out to be the biggest one, across segments.

A longer turnaround time in case of ports, demand shock impacting volumes, and supply chain disruption impacting last-mile delivery, are other challenges, said Analysts covering this sector.

“In our view, bigger and multi-cargo ports are better off during a downtrend. Most ports of Adani are multi-cargo and bigger, which give it better control on traffic by offering discounts. Hence, we expect it to continue to outgrow the industry,” said Edelweiss.

Cargo-wise, India’s rapidly growing container trade (25 per cent mix) is likely to take a bigger knock on account of strong global inter-linkages in container movement.

In FY20, cargo handling at major ports grew a meagre 0.82 per cent, against 2.9 per cent achieved in the previous financial year. Container traffic is likely to face a slowdown from the automotive industry, and other container cargoes like white goods imports and granite exports segments in FY21, due to weak demand, said CARE Ratings. In the logistics sector, rail freight services are on, but partial permanent demand loss is expected, given bookings are likely to reduce in April, said the latest Dolat Capital report.

Road freight operations, on the other hand, will see permanent demand loss on account of the disruption, it said. Players such as Mahindra Logistics, Future Supply Chain, and Rivigo have witnessed no cargo movement except for essentials and the segment is expected to take a revenue hit during this time period.