ZIM restructures to grow Africa business

Niche opportunities a firm focus JOY ORLEK ZIM LINE has restructured and refocused to grow its share of the Southern African market. “The company sees Africa as a big growth opportunity and the starting point has been the setting up of a ZIM Africa super-district office in Johannesburg,” says Rhett van Zyl, managing director of local ZIM-owned agents, Polaris Shipping. This will be headed up by recently-appointed representative Eli Aviv with a 6-strong team focusing strongly on growing ZIM’s business in the region. The line’s three regional offices in East, South and West Africa will continue to operate autonomously, reporting directly to the newly created super district office instead of to Haifa, as in the past. Previous general manager for the East Africa region, Aviv officially begins his South African tour of duty in January next year. He joined ZIM Lines 15 years ago as third mate, subsequently moving to an office post in Haifa and holding various positions in operations, sales and marketing. For the past three years he has been based in Kenya where he oversaw market growth of 13% for the line following restructuring of staff and services. And Aviv is keen to see similar growth in his new post for the entire Africa region. “Business is there for the taking,” says Aviv. “The ZIM Africa plan is to look at growth wherever the opportunities present themselves,” says Van Zyl. The line has been looking at opportunities on the Europe – South Africa trade, but port congestion in Durban has delayed the launch of this service. ZIM will start off with a Europe - West Africa service and will look at extending this to South Africa as and when port congestion problems in Durban ease up, said Van Zyl. The three current services – Zimstar, LNL and GSL – will continue to call at Durban. “We recently included a Cape Town call eastbound on the GSL service, which calls Durban from the Far East en route to West Africa and has until recently returned directly to the Far East without calling South Africa on this eastbound leg. Again this was the result of congestion problems in Durban. We view Cape Town as a niche market and see a lot of potential for the GSL service out of Cape Town to the Far East.” As a smaller player, niche opportunities are clearly a firm focus, and these could include the Port of Maputo once workable rail links are in place. Van Zyl joined Polaris in June this year, having notched up 12 years of industry experience in a variety of disciplines, from stevedoring to port operations and ships' agency. His two previous posts were as regional manager for MOL in KwaZulu Natal for three years and more recently GM at Rennies for CSAV.