Several high-level promotions including a change at the helm are helping CFR Freight retain the required momentum to sustain and improve its reputation in the consolidation sector.
But it’s the changes they are making through innovation that are giving CFR an edge, said Martin Keck, newly appointed CEO and former managing director.
“We are seeing in a much bigger, faster, and more effective system soon that’s built around direct electronic data interchange (EDI).” Keck emphasised that EDI, which had already been implemented with one of their biggest clients, was a “no brainer as we’re speaking directly to one another already”, adding that “what it really boils down to is cutting out duplication in the administration process”.
Illustrating the company’s conviction that EDI is about seamless service satisfaction, Keck explained that invoicing, shipping instructions and related documentation, to name but a few examples where red tape can slow things down, would in future be more fluidly processed.
“It will streamline the entire process, helping to speed up delivery for our clients.” Putting clients first through fast-tracking their consolidation concerns is after all what has propelled the company’s growth, from a tiny outfit of five people when Keck’s brother in law, Uli Hatesohl, started CFR in 1991, to a multi-national enterprise with some 250 permanent staffers, according to Keck.
Along with Keck taking over the reins from former CEO Peter Schmidt-Löffler, at least two other employees have had their hard work rewarded by being promoted into the top positions of their respective divisions.
Lee Viljoen, who has 12 years’ experience in NVOCC consolidation and started with CFR in 2014 as business development manager, was appointed general manager of ocean freight in 2016 and from the 1st of September will become director of the same division. Joining Viljoen as director of his division from September is Stephen Bishop who started with CFR just over six years ago as airfreight branch manager.
“I have worked in several roles in my freight forwarding career but have always gravitated to airfreight,” said Bishop. The same can be said of Keck, who’s gravitation to the company’s most senior position was somewhat of a foregone conclusion given his experience. Reflecting on what it was like when he was brought over from Germany by Hatesohl, Keck said “the technology that we’re using today is different to what it was like in 1994. The freight industry was just beginning to get out of telex.
“Now we have blockchain, 3D printing, and the internet of things, all of them technologies that are fundamentally changing the world, and it’s our intention to move along with the changes and challenges of the times.”
Apart from its branches in South Africa’s primary ports, CFR’s footprint has spread across Africa, including CAFS, its branch in Mauritius. Additionally, its loading-offloading spin-off, ZacPak, has become a storage facility unlike any other, according to Keck “We are incredibly well connected continentally and globally,” he said. “Our Spanish partners are doing very well with their own offices in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, and our German partners are progressing in establishing CFR’s brand in Kenya, Tanzania and Egypt.”
But it’s in innovation that Keck sees CFR’s future.
“We’re at an extremely exciting point in time and we’re well set up whatever the challenges might be. “We’re looking back at one of the most successful periods in the company’s history, thanks in large part to the ability of people like Lee and Stephen, and in addition to continued physical expansion, we want to increase our operating efficiencies through the introduction of IT systems like EDI.”
