Excellence brings on board Far East specialist SA machinery imports play key role

ALAN PEAT
A BOOST to the image of Excellence Forwarding is that it was one of the first 15 forwarding and clearing agents accredited by customs for electronic data interchange (EDI), according to director Eric Houniet.
“This was a vital part of streamlining our airfreight and seafreight procedures,” he told FTW, “an activity conducted in harmony with our worldwide network of agency partners,”
At the moment, the biggest market for Excellence is the north-west continent (NWC) and Mediterranean - with Germany, Holland, the UK and Italy the primary countries of interest.
“For us, the biggest market is in SA imports of machinery,” he said, “with a lot of this product now coming out of this region.”
While the seafreight trade is currently facing a series of general rates increases (GRIs), negotiations with the shipping lines on rates proceed “very favourably”, according to Houniet.
“Also,” he added, “the present rand exchange rate is helping the growth in SA imports.”
A new focus for Excellence is to build up trade with the Far East, with the company having established a network of agents in a relationship with a company that has 16 offices in mainland China’s booming trade market, and branches serving Taiwan and Hong Kong.
This was motivated by Asia’s dominance in the global supply of electronic products.
“We saw an opportunity to get into that market,” said Houniet, “providing a good business prospect which we’d have been foolish not to take.”
To help build-up this trade, he has just appointed a Far East specialist to join his team.
For exports, Excellence Forwarding’s primary market is Africa.
And, despite socio-political and exchange rate problems in many of the African states, Houniet noted that his company had seen no apparent downturn in trade volumes to its African market.