Birkart Globistics has snatched 9th spot in the top 30 with a turnover in 2003 of R68.9-million. “We have been busy diversifying to routes which we’ve never tried before,” said Adrian Brink, GM of national operations. One example of this, he added, has been a lot of projects into the new market areas of China and Japan. “We have set up warehouses in both those countries,” Brink told FTW, “and we are doing deliveries direct from the supply chain to the manufacturing plants on a just in-time (JIT) basis.” The company is currently working on a number of other projects which it has in the pipeline – with these directed at delivery into the Far East and Europe. While Brink, like others in the forwarding trade, expressed concern at the deleterious effects of the strong rand, he is conscious that there are two sides to every coin. “Although it has certainly been hurting the country’s export trade volumes,” he said, “there is a converse effect on imports. “There is a smile on the faces of exporters at the lower price for commodities in rand terms – and for us there are substantial compensatory advantages on our import side balancing out any problems that exports might face.”
