New Walvis office provides full service range

CAPE TOWN-based Trade Ocean Shipping Services has opened an office in Walvis Bay supplying ships’ agency, clearing and forwarding, logistics and related services. This has been achieved through combining resources with local shipping company Pelican Management Services. One of the immediate benefits to existing Namibian clients is that they now have access to the extended network of Trade Ocean offices in Cape Town and Durban. The new office is headed by Pelican founders Michelle Kirov and Bogdan Kotchoubei. “This is a very competitive business and in order to offer our clients the best service and value, we wanted to provide the full ambit of logistics and shipping services” says Kirov. Together, she and Kotchoubei have extensive experience in providing services such as ship's agency, clearing and forwarding, logistics and transport brokering. Trade Ocean Shipping Namibia, which opened its doors in March 2008, is already diversifying – although “gradually, to ensure continuity of quality service,” says Kirov. The company has recently started handling perishable exports. Kirov is also using her experience in transport logistics and load brokering to provide a “full logistics service” along the Walvis Bay corridors to neighbouring countries. With transport costs rising in all industries, she believes that more and more companies will be looking at using Walvis Bay for the savings it offers on certain routes. “We have done the calculations and Walvis Bay is definitely a cheaper alternative for many exporters and importers,” she says. The company’s ship's agency division is taking advantage of the growing number of vessels calling for repair and dry-docking in Walvis Bay. Kotchoubei has many years of experience in managing these specialised services to salvage tugs and other vessels being repaired and dry-docked in Walvis Bay. He sees this side of the business growing as a second floating dry dock is being introduced to the port later this year. Through the partnership with Trade Ocean South Africa, agents fluent in Japanese, Spanish Chinese and Russian are brought in to assist as the need arises, says Kotchoubei