With less than a month
to go before Ziegler
ZA moves into
new premises in
Spartan, the company has brought
another major customer on board
– specialising in safety and allied
products for the mining industry.
“They’ll have a dedicated area
in the warehouse and we’ll do the
import and distribution of the
product,” said chief operations officer,
Paul Lawrence.
Ziegler’s new facility will treble
current warehousing capacity and
dedicated space is already at a
premium, Lawrence said.
Dedicated space has been allocated
to several global customers in the
energy sector and the first shipments
are due to arrive in South Africa later
this month.
“We’ve often had warehouse
opportunities but have had to turn
them away because we haven’t had
the facilities. We can now offer an
all-encapsulating service with our
warehouse capability providing the
opportunity to grow our clearing and
forwarding business,” said Lawrence.
And while warehousing itself is
not always a particularly lucrative
sector, it’s the spinoffs that create
opportunity – feeding into Ziegler’s
wider 4PL strategy.
There’s no denying that 2015
has been a difficult year but the
company’s significant investment is a
vote of confidence for future growth,
says Lawrence.
However, one of the major
issues that has stunted growth
and that needs to be addressed, in
Lawrence’s view, is load shedding
– a sentiment shared by the rest of
the business world and one of the
factors contributing to South Africa’s
waning status as the gateway into the
continent.
“But Gauteng remains the
business hub of South Africa – and a
distribution centre for cargo moving
north to Africa,” he said.
“Infrastructure upgrades at ports
on the continent are challenging
Durban’s premier role and without
some urgent intervention we could
see shippers routing their cargo
through other African countries,
using the likes of Maputo port.”
But for the moment it’s full steam
ahead for Ziegler as its Gauteng
growth strategy takes shape.
INSERT & CAPTION
We can now offer an allencapsulating
service with
our warehouse capability
providing the opportunity
to grow our clearing and
forwarding business.
– Paul Lawrence
“
Dedicated warehousing capacity snapped up
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