Viamax officially takes over Spoornet's smaller clients

Leonard Neill LOGISTICS COMPANY Viamax will open its new contact centre at Spoornet's Mjantshi House headquarters in Johannesburg today (February 1) as the start of its takeover of all the rail authority's contracts and services for companies which do not exceed R1million in orders annually. Establishing the service has been the task of recently appointed Viamax general manager consolidation business, Bokaba August Maluleka, who travelled an eventful journey through the transport business before taking up his new post last November. What the new fully computerised service amounts to is that clients will have their bookings consolidated and streamlined in a major cost saving operation, according to Maluleka. "Our target is the small load which falls short of Spoornet's new focus on customers who require heavy capacity haulage, giving them bookings each year which exceed the R1million mark," he says. Spoornet has seen the lower portion of the market fall from a figure of R700million annually six years ago to a current figure of R280million. Companies falling by the wayside, others involved in mergers and the bulk being smaller booking operations have resulted in Spoornet focusing its interests on the bigger market. "We are taking up the balance and it means personal service to them all," says Maluleka, who was executive director on the board of the Cross Border Route Transport Agency, formed a few years ago to handle and expedite cross border traffic to South Africa's neighbours. With various university degrees and diplomas backing his knowledge of the transport industry, his honours degree in industrial sociology and an international BA political science, encouraged former transport minister Mac Maharaj to move him from previous transport positions in Rotek Industries ( a division of Eskom) and the National Productivity Institute, to head up the cross border operation.