Röhlig-Grindrod Logistics has embarked on a concerted drive to grow export sales – and has appointed Jacques Strydom as national sales manager to drive the initiative. “We will be introducing some new and innovative products to ensure volume growth,” air export and Africa development manager Eugene Duvenage told FTW, noting that exports remained a tough sell.
“From an import perspective there will be a global drive to promote our focus and global trade lanes.” He said this would be achieved through “robust product development” as well as international sales visits throughout the coming year. “Carrier usage and contracted capacity will be the main topics of discussion to ensure we are able to offer multi-tiered products that are reliable and competitive,” said Duvenage. T
he company was currently in talks with its airline partners to ensure additional contractual space for the next schedule, he added. “2017 was an exciting space for the airfreight industry and we saw a ‘real’ peak season for the first time in many years.” He said the industry was expecting that volumes would continue their upward trajectory. Duvenage pointed out that on its inbound routes, Rohlig-Grindrod had “longstanding block space agreements in place”, but even these were stretched to the limit and overflow capacity was sourced daily.
“There were quite a few contributing factors for this worldwide surge in air cargo volumes. The most prominent were the backlog in the shipping industry caused by various factors such as the cyber-attack on Maersk and the demise of Hanjin, the world’s seventh largest container shipping line. “Add to this the storms encountered along the United States coastline, Europe and even the damages caused in Durban port, and this was almost the perfect storm for air cargo volumes to increase,” said Duvenage.
Quote: In 2017 we saw a ‘real’ peak season for the first time in many years. – Eugene Duvenage
