As the seafreight routes to Asia – one of South Africa’s biggest global trade partners – remain constrained in terms of available space and as freight rates continue to rise, non-vessel operating common carriers’ (NVOCCs) guaranteed less than container load (LCL) space is becoming more attractive to shippers. “We must remain agile to ensure that as a service provider we are geared to assist in all areas of the market – and one of our main challenges is to tailor our service offerings to help specific clients optimise their own services to their clients,” said Nicholas von Flemming, CFR Freight key accounts sales and servicing consultant. As part of this, he said
it was important for a consolidator to ensure it continued to offer its clients the full range of export services, despite space, rate and other constraints. “Equally, the viability of smaller direct trades in the face of renewed full container load (FCL) aggression by carriers needs constant revisiting,” Von Flemming pointed out. He told FTW that a neutral NVOCC could play a key role in helping to keep clients’ costs down. “We continually develop a series of strategies in this regard which we communicate to our customers,” said Von Flemming, highlighting that LCL was geared for underf low and overf low loads which were a natural consequence of intra-regional trade. “It is therefore critical that we, as an NVOCC, continue to invest in as many direct sailings to replicate the FCL offering the consignee demands,” he said. “As we are considered an extension of their business by many of our clients, we are privy to information and business sensitivities that allow us to tailor services, direct sailings and products to their needs,” Von Flemming said.
