CHENNAI: The state government on Tuesday unveiled a five-year warehousing policy aimed at easing logistics bottlenecks and supporting its ambition to build a $1tn state economy by 2030.
The policy focuses on expanding warehousing infrastructure beyond established industrial hubs such as Chennai into delta regions, Category C districts, and Tier II and Tier III cities.
Under the policy, projects in delta and Category C districts will be eligible for a 25% fixed capital subsidy, capped at `2 crore and disbursed over three years, provided they meet minimum capacity requirements. Land in SIPCOT industrial parks will be offered at half the standard rate, while large facilities of at least 1 million sq ft on government land will receive a five-year exemption from electricity tax. Additional incentives will be available for green features such as rooftop solar and LEED-certified construction.
It identifies six priority areas: greenfield warehousing in industrial parks, brownfield expansion of existing facilities, public-private partnerships through land allocation, adoption of sustainable and smart technologies, development of commodity-specific silos and cold chains, and ease-of-doing-business reforms aligned with the state’s logistics policy.
The policy, unveiled by Chief Minister MK Stalin, underscores the growing importance of storage and distribution to the state’s manufacturing-led growth strategy. Tamil Nadu, which contributes about 9.2% to India’s GDP despite accounting for just 4% of its landmass, is targeting a $250bn manufacturing output by the end of the decade. Officials say the Warehousing Policy 2026 is designed to address sharp regional imbalances in storage infrastructure while consolidating established logistics hubs.
At present, demand is heavily concentrated around Chennai, which absorbed around 5mn sq ft of Grade-A warehousing space in 2024, led by third-party logistics providers, manufacturing firms and e-commerce companies. Coimbatore followed with about 1.5mn sq ft, driven largely by retail supply chains, while Hosur has emerged as a key node for the automotive and electronics ecosystem.
By contrast, delta districts and several Category-C regions remain under-served, despite strong bases in foodgrains, agro-processing, fisheries and small-scale manufacturing. Limited access to cold storage and commodity-specific warehousing has constrained value addition, increased post-harvest losses and weakened supply-chain resilience in these regions.
Government-owned warehousing capacity in Tamil Nadu currently exceeds 1.5mn tonnes, supplemented by around 135 private cold storage facilities with an estimated 0.2mn tonnes of capacity.
However, the report acknowledge that the geographical spread of this infrastructure remains uneven.