As it celebrates its fifth anniversary, ZacPak – a wholly owned subsidiary of CFR Freight – is looking to expand its Cape Town and Port Elizabeth depots and expects to see continued growth in cross-docking and local/long-haul distribution.
“Our focus is on finding new facilities so that we can strategically position ourselves for improved growth and, subsequently, improved service levels to our clients,” said ZacPak MD Willie Nel, noting that there had been “great support” from the clearing agents to ZacPak’s crossdocking solution.
“Moving to bigger facilities in Cape Town and implementing a ground operation has increased our productivity and upped turnaround times for our clients.”
He said the recent establishment of a depot in the Coega Industrial Development Zone had also provided more scope for growth.
Nel told FTW that having a strong presence in a number of port cities also gave customers more options, particularly when disaster struck as it did last year when a storm caused major damage at the port of Durban.
“Since we already had a facility in Port Elizabeth, when the vessels were re-directed to the Eastern Cape we were able to handle the massive influx quite well,” he said. But port productivity remained a challenge and customers still experienced delays in getting containers out of the terminal and unpacked in time to meet the free turn-in times, he added.
“The only way to overcome this is to maintain constant communication with customers around the challenges so they can timeously apply for extensions with the shipping lines and avoid unnecessary additional costs.” ZacPak had introduced after-hours shifts at its depots to ensure they could pull containers “when others had given up”, he said.
According to Nel, one of the greatest lessons learnt since establishing ZacPak Johannesburg in 2013 was that the industry often underestimated the turnaround time of a container truck between the terminal and the depot.
“The costs associated with this and the need for business sustainability teaches you that you cannot be complacent; if you don’t strive to keep your customer happy, your competitor will,” said Nel.
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Port productivity remains a challenge. – Willie Nel
