Logistics heavyweight gets serious about Africa

After several years of passive involvement in the South African market, APL Logistics has embarked on an aggressive drive to grow its local customer base. In South Africa recently to touch base with prospective customers and local agents, Diamond Shipping, were APL Logistics vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Eddy Wouters, and Azfar Khan, the company’s Middle East and Africa general manager. “Over the past five years, supporting sourcing from South Africa has been a value-added service offered to our global customer base,” Wouters told FTW. “We are now proactively going out to the market and telling people what we can do. “Africa is a new playground for us but we believe that by replicating ‘best practice’ models from markets like the US, Europe and Asia, we can add value for South African customers,” he said. Launched in the US in 1980, APL Logistics is the 3PL arm of the Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) Group, a Singapore-based global container shipping and logistics service provider. “We’ve developed our logistics activity to address the 3PL needs of the market, operating as a separate unit. Our lengthy association with Diamond Shipping in Dubai made it the logical local agency partner.” In the highly competitive South African market, Khan believes APL’s value proposition lies in its solutionsbased philosophy. “We believe the time is ripe to speak to South African industries where we believe we can add value.” “We’re talking about their demand forecasting, inventory holding, cash flow issues, sourcing patterns, consolidation – we have honed our skills over many years of serving customers in US and Europe who are sourcing from multiple locations in Asia. The same thing is happening here – and we can help the customer to create efficiencies in their supply chain,” said Wouters. “Our natural habitat of where we can add services that make sense is apparel and retail, automotive, light industrial and technology companies – and these are the verticals on which the company will be focusing in South Africa.” Wouters believes that retailers the world over have the same objective – they want to reduce airfreight to ocean freight where they can, they want visibility, they want quality control at origin and they want to improve supply chain efficiency. It’s about where they can take cost out of the system. And based on our performance outside of South Africa, we believe that this is where we can make a difference,” he said. APL Logistics provides international, integrated supply chain services in more than 60 countries, including both origin and destination services such as freight consolidation, warehousing and distribution management. INSERT & CAPTION 1 We believe that by replicating ‘best practice’ models from markets like the US, Europe and Asia, we can add value for SA customers. – Eddy Wouters INSERT & CAPTION 2 APL’s value proposition lies in its solutions-based philosophy. – Azfar Khan