SA’s Yiffy hopeful heads for LA

South Africa's young freight forwarder of the year, Daniel Terbille, is heading off to Los Angeles to represent Africa and the Middle East in the finals of the International Federation of Freight Forwarder Associations’ (Fiata) Young International Freight Forwarder of the year (Yiffy) competition. Terbille, who works for UTi in Cape Town, was awarded the title of Young Freight Forwarder for the region: Africa, Middle-East (RAME) last week. He will now compete in the finals along with the winners of the three other regions that include the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific for the coveted title of Young International Freight Forwarder of 2012. The overall winner of the competition will be announced at the annual Fiata congress that takes place in Los Angeles in October this year following presentations to an international panel of judges. Terbille won the South African leg of the competition with a well-researched dissertation in which he developed a multimodal endto- end supply chain model from a South African retail point of view in the fashion apparel retail sector. This was the first year in which Fiata called on contestants in the competition to write their dissertations on such broad topics. “The brief was very simple,” said Terbille. “Take an import or export commodity and build your own case study around it. It allowed me to combine my two passions – freight forwarding and supply chain management, which I originally studied in my home country of Germany.” Honoured to be representing not just South Africa, but the entire continent as well as the Middle East, Terbille said he was now preparing for the finals. “Every supply chain is driven by what an organisation intends to achieve in the market place. In view of both market- and costrelated pressure it is becoming ever more important for freight forwarding companies to understand their clients’ market-related requirements.” CAPTION Daniel Terbille … combining two passions – freight forwarding and supply chain management.