New concepts enhance automotive product

WITH A slim increase of 3.3% over 2002, Kuehne & Nagel recorded an IATA turnover of R144.8-million in 2003, and maintained its 2nd place in the Top 30 airfreight export agents. Although not such a significant growth as the 20% of the year before, national airfreight manager Raymond van Wyk told FTW that this was not a true reflection of the company’s growth. This, he added, because non-IATA air carriers were used for a fair proportion of its overall cargo movement. “Taking this into consideration,” said Van Wyk, “our overall growth is in the vicinity of 10.5%.” Once again the biggest growth area for the company’s export traffic was into Africa – with automotive business into Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania a driving force behind the increase. And, apart from the automotive sector, KN records show that there was also a noticeable growth in the perishable export market into the continent. In general terms, things started to pick up again as 2003 progressed, according to Van Wyk. “Towards the end of 2003 our market share to Europe and the USA started to increase,” he said, “and this trend was carried forward during 2004.” As in the past, Van Wyk points to KN performing very well in automotive industry exports into Europe. “And,” he told FTW, “Kuehne & Nagel is still developing new concepts in order to enhance our services in the automotive industry.”