Union Shipping Minister Sarbananda Sonowal flagged off the DLB Patkai from Dibrugarh’s Bogibeel Terminal on Monday, carrying 540 t of methanol to Bangladesh. The shipment is the first cargo movement from Upper Assam to a foreign port since Independence and revives Dibrugarh’s river trade nearly 70 years after its historic river ghat stopped operating.

The methanol was produced by state-owned Assam Petro-Chemicals (APCL) at Namrup and is bound for Pangaon Port in Dhaka. The vessel will travel about 768 km along National Waterway-2 on the Brahmaputra before reaching the India-Bangladesh border and continuing through the Indo-Bangladesh Protocol Route. The complete journey from Bogibeel to Narayanganj is expected to cover about 1,300 km.

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma joined the flag-off ceremony virtually. Sonowal described the voyage as a revival of a river route whose steamer operations had fallen silent decades ago, while encouraging young people in Assam to view the Brahmaputra as a source of economic opportunity.

The shipment is being treated as a test of the Brahmaputra’s potential as a commercially viable freight corridor linking the Northeast with overseas markets. Officials said regular methanol shipments to Bangladesh are planned, potentially creating a dependable route for industrial cargo produced in Assam.

The movement was facilitated by the recent establishment of customs and immigration complexes at Bogibeel and Dhubri. The government is also developing inland-waterway infrastructure across the Northeast to make river transport a more efficient alternative for bulk cargo. Another vessel is expected to follow in the coming days, with the two vessels together scheduled to carry 1,080 t of APCL-produced methanol to Bangladesh.