Recession forces shippers and forwarders to think outside the box

Importers and exporters are equally keen to find opportunities in Africa following the global economic crisis that left very few countries unscathed. According to Jade da Costa, director of Intraspeed, a company that has been operating in Eastern Central Africa for 25 years, initial thoughts that the crisis would not hit Africa were wrong. “Business has been tough and volumes have been down. With African countries looking at GDP growth being cut to half, it has not been an easy year,” said Da Costa. “However the growth in many African countries is 2-3%, which means that the economy is growing at the same rate.” He believes the time has come for freight forwarders and logistics companies to think outside the box and to give clients a solution to keep their businesses alive. “Everyone has to work together through these difficult and testing times, but I believe this has given everyone a good wake up in terms of how to do things and think of things in the correct manner.” Da Costa says Intraspeed was fortunate to be involved in certain industries that were not affected by the recession – which allowed them to stay afloat. “We now have some expansion plans which we want to implement in the next few months. We recently opened an Intraspeed Zimbabwe office in Harare with a local partner which we believe will give us some scope.” He believes with the mining industry expected to go back into the explorations, the times are changing and the recession may just be over. “We need to remain optimistic,” said Da Costa. “I firmly believe that Africa is the sleeping giant of the world and volumes will increase in Africa in the new year. I don’t think the general peak season that we have all been expecting will do anything new and nor will it compare well with the past. Volumes may increase going into December, but it is going to be fairly quiet comparatively, until next year that is.”