ILA teams up with Chinese partner

Leonard Neill EXPANDING TRADE between South Africa and China has encouraged International Liner Agencies (ILA) to establish a partnership with Hong Kong-based Ocean World Shipping to provide the first joint NVOCC service connecting the two countries. "Ocean World has offices in all the major trading centres in China, and as we are both NVO companies, the working arrangement is ideal," says ILA managing director Rod Taylor. "Right now the focus is on imports from China to South Africa. They provide much of what we want whereas South Africa cannot manufacture the huge requirements the vast Chinese markets demand, except in the field of raw materials, which we are exporting to them." ILA originally focused purely on imports when the company was established in Gauteng in 1995, with the purpose of establishing credibility within the freight forwarding market. "We then recognised that in order to compete as a front line NVO we needed to provide fully fledged services for both imports and exports. We established our first trade route with Italy, but extended this to the North American continent, United Kingdom, Pacific Rim, Australia and the Far East. Now China is providing us with a huge new opportunity." The Canadian service was a particularly interesting one, he says, as his company pioneered this four years ago and was the first NVO to offer a direct consolidation service to South Africa. With offices in Durban and Cape Town and working through an agent in Port Elizabeth, ILA is now expanding its network with greater focus on the Far East which allows for weekly and direct groupage services, says Taylor.