Enabling resilient chemical logistics
In a special interview for Insight Express, Rajkiran Kanagala, President & Chief Business Officer, TCI Group, and Director, TCIL Middle East Logistics Services, discusses the evolving chemical logistics landscape, from building resilience amid disruption and harnessing AI to exploring innovative technologies and the future of multimodal logistics
What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges for logistics providers serving the chemical and petrochemical industry today?
The physical movement of product has never been the hard part — coordination is. Aligning multiple transport modes, jurisdictions and stakeholders for cargo that leaves no room for error is where complexity lives. A rerouted vessel doesn’t just change an ETA; it changes customs documentation, port protocols and storage compatibility downstream.
This plays out sharply in the Middle East, which sits at the crossroads of most India-bound trade. Regional conflict — from Red Sea disruptions to broader tensions — have shown how fast instability cascades: ocean freight absorbs the first shock through rerouting and congestion, air freight absorbs the second as time-sensitive cargo shifts onto already-tight capacity. Chemical cargo feels this more, since few carriers handle hazardous goods on short-notice alternate routings.
The opportunity is that complexity rewards genuine multimodal capability over bolted-together services. Where cargo moves seamlessly across road, rail, coastal shipping and specialized bulk handling under one operator, much of that fragility gets absorbed before it reaches the customer — which is where TCI has chosen to invest.
I discussed this in June with Nadia Abdul Aziz, President, NAFL, the National Association of Freight and Logistics, during “Leading Without a Map,” a virtual conversation on navigating global disruption held under the HBS Club of the GCC. It reaffirmed that the operators who lead next are those who build in agility rather than wait for stability. At TCI, resilience is a value driver — multimodal capacity, nationwide infrastructure and digital intelligence working together to protect delivery commitments at scale.
How are AI, automation and data-driven decision-making transforming logistics operations, particularly when it comes to improving safety, efficiency and resilience for chemical logistics?
The value shows up in unglamorous places: predictive maintenance that reduces in-transit failure risk for hazardous cargo, route and load optimization that accounts for chemical compatibility, and real-time monitoring that flags a deviation before it becomes an incident.
This matters even more on long, multi-jurisdiction routes — like those linking India through the Middle East to Europe — where continuous visibility across ocean and air legs lets both provider and customer react in hours, not days. Safety, efficiency and resilience move together here: a digitally monitored fleet is a safer fleet, and a safer fleet is usually a more efficient one, because fewer disruptions mean fewer costly recoveries. Technology alone isn’t the
achievement — it’s the discipline built around it. Initiatives such as Responsible Care®, and platforms like Nicer Globe, BIC and ITCO, are leading the way in embedding that discipline across the chemical logistics ecosystem.
Can you tell us more about your strategic collaboration with FLYING WHALES? How does it support your vision for innovation, and what new possibilities could it unlock for logistics in the region and beyond?
Our collaboration with FLYING WHALES centers on the LCA60T: a rigid cargo airship that carries up to 60 metric tonnes and, critically, loads and unloads while hovering, which removes the need for runways, airports or heavy ground infrastructure at either end. That single capability changes the economics of moving oversized cargo. Its typical operating range lies at 1,000 km, and temporary operational bases can also be deployed nearby specific large-scale projects.
For TCI, innovation has never been technology for its own sake — it has to solve a customer problem at scale. Today, moving a transformer, industrial equipment, a reactor vessel, a turbine blade or a bridge girder to a remote or infrastructure-constrained site can require significant route preparation, specialized equipment and complex project logistics. The LCA60T introduces a new option: direct point-to-point heavy-lift delivery with minimal ground infrastructure at the destination with materially lower carbon footprint than conventional heavy transport.
What makes it work commercially are our combined capabilities. FLYING WHALES provides the heavy-lift operational capability; TCI integrates it into an end-to-end logistics solution, close to 1,500 offices PAN India, hubs, warehouses and yards spanning road, rail, coastal shipping, air freight and warehousing. Together, the partners can connect conventional transport networks with locations where infrastructure constraints make conventional heavy transport costly, slow or impractical.
India provides an ideal launchpad for a broader Asia Pacific deployment strategy, combining strong industrial demand, major infrastructure development and a growing need for innovative heavy-lift solutions.
Which industries or applications do you believe stand to benefit the most from this innovation, and how could it address any infrastructure or accessibility challenges?
The clearest early demand sits in five areas: energy and renewables; construction and mining; heavy process industries and heavy engineering; defence logistics and strategic infrastructure; and humanitarian logistics.
For the chemical and petrochemical sector specifically, the constraint is familiar to every project team: reactors, columns, heat exchangers and pressure vessels are fabricated in a handful of specialist yards and then have to reach a site that may be inland, remote or in the middle of a live plant turnaround. Today that means jetty availability, SPMT convoys, route surveys, temporary causeways and shutdown windows measured in weeks. Hover-load delivery takes the road and quay geometry out of the equation, and shortens the critical path on both greenfield builds and turnaround-driven replacements — where every day of delay carries a direct production cost.
Renewables is an equally sharp case. Wind turbine blades have crossed 80 meters and are still growing; moving them by road means escort convoys, corner cuts, seasonal windows and, increasingly, routes that physically cannot take the length. Airship lift removes the road geometry constraint entirely and opens up high-wind sites that are currently uneconomic to develop. The same logic applies to power evacuation — transformers and reactors for remote substations.
As companies navigate complex trade routes, regulatory requirements and sustainability goals, what qualities define a truly reliable logistics partner today? What should chemical manufacturers look for when selecting long-term logistics partners?
Three things matter most. First, regulatory fluency — real, current knowledge of hazardous goods classification and cross-border compliance, kept current as routes like India–Middle East–Europe develop and regulations shift alongside them. Second, infrastructure actually built for the cargo — specialized bulk and reefer handling, trained personnel — not repurposed general capacity. Third, transparency when things go wrong: a delay disclosed and managed jointly builds more trust than an untested track record.
Reliability is proven on the hard shipments — when a route closes without warning, a conflict escalates, or ocean capacity tightens overnight — and the response is a rebuilt plan within hours: shifting volume to air freight, or re-sequencing ocean bookings across a different port, rather than a call asking the customer what to do next.
Looking ahead, what innovations or trends do you believe will have the greatest impact on the future of chemical logistics over the next five to 10 years, and how is TCI positioning itself to lead that transformation?
The providers who matter most will treat sustainability, safety and digital visibility as one integrated capability, not three competing initiatives. Cleaner fleets, better handling standards and transparent tracking are becoming baseline expectations, not premium offerings.
Trade architecture is shifting too. The India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) signals a deliberate move to de-risk trade from single chokepoints, with the Middle East evolving from a transit point into a manufacturing and re-export hub in its own right — especially for chemicals and energy. Providers positioning early along this corridor will hold a structural advantage.
TCI’s approach is shaped by decades of moving cargo across India’s demanding geography. Continued investment in multimodal infrastructure, specialized chemical handling, next-generation options like airship logistics, and predictive digital tools form the basis of that positioning. Disruption isn’t going away — the goal is to keep getting better at absorbing it before it reaches the customer.