Managing supply chain risk and disruption during COVID-19 | A discussion with Shamit Shah, Group Managing Director at Freight in Time
The global COVID-19 pandemic has changed the business landscape for good. The disruptions globally have been major. Although many organisations are now in recovery mode, the impact of COVID-19 on business and the economy will still linger for a long time.
Global supply chains have been hit hard by the pandemic. Logistics providers worldwide were forced to rethink their supply chain structures, reshape their delivery processes, and improve supply chain resilience and real-time connectivity.
The pandemic has accelerated supply chain digitalisation. With the new social distancing and work-from-home models amidst the global lockdowns, many businesses have to adopt new digital processes and tools.
As we’ve entered a new reality, we have to learn to adapt rapidly to unfamiliar circumstances, uncertainty and operational constraints to keep core business activities going. And that requires updating crisis management mechanisms to facilitate and support change and progress amidst the pandemic.
I have had a brief discussion with Shamit Shah, Group Managing Director at Freight in Time, the leading regional logistics company in East Africa, on how they navigate their supply chain activities through the pandemic and what changes and trends are emerging in supply chains post COVID-19.
FIT is a leading regional logistics company present in 9 countries across East Africa. It controls over 450MT of airfreight export cargo per week. How did you manage to achieve this success?
Shamit Shah: Freight in Time got established in 1996 to facilitate the growing perishable exports of its ‘mother’ company Sunripe, which produces and exports horticultural products from Kenya and Tanzania.
From the very beginning, we offered end-to-end supply chain solutions, both outbound and into our region. It was very clear that our international clients and partners preferred one regional partner to handle East Africa.
Therefore we expanded our footprint across East Africa and added additional countries over the last 20 years – and we are now in 9 countries across East Africa – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Djibouti, South Sudan and Ethiopia, Burundi and Comoros. We have our own offices in every airport, port and border point in the region.
Thus having become a one-stop-shop for all requirements in the East African region and beyond (since FiT’s countries are the entry points also for neighbouring Central and Southern African countries), FiT became the preferred and often exclusive partner of many of the biggest global integrators, like UPS, Scanglobal, Dachser, KWE, Nippon Express, Rhenus, XPO Logistics.
While we continued to expand our footprint, we also grew our service offering.
Understanding that global as well as local customers required more and more customised and sophisticated solutions, ideally delivered by one entity, FiT grew into a real 4 or even 5PL provider.
We are not only accredited Import/ Exporter on record, operate general and specialised warehousing, e.g. for pharmaceuticals; we are now also the Cargo GSA of Ethiopian Airlines in 5 of our countries.
So to answer your question: it is the combination of regional spread, variety of service offerings and quality of services that are the reason for our success.
What is your core vision and mission?
Shamit Shah: Our vision is to be the most respected fully integrated logistics provider in Africa. As such, we have the mission to add value to our customers’ supply chains by providing the most innovative, reliable, efficient and cost-effective logistic solutions.
We should add value to our customers’ supply chains.
But our real mission goes beyond that. We also want to save lives. Over the last couple of years, we have handled numerous humanitarian and pharmaceutical /health commodity shipments into and within the region, regularly by winning the same from the multinationals in charge of the logistics for the respective program.
Recently, however, both the humanitarian / donor community and the aid/donation receiving countries have realised that to save lives, equitable and timely delivery to the actual person in need is paramount.
And here is where we as FiT can live up to our passion. In first of their kind PPPs (Public Private Partnerships) with the national bodies that are in charge of pharmaceutical distribution, we are running pilot projects in Uganda (in partnership with the NMS/GAVI and The Global Fund) and in Ethiopia (in partnership with EPSA & The Global Fund) where we are delivering essential vaccines (in Ethiopia combined with other project commodities) to the health facilities, and improving availability of these neighbouring life-saving commodities.
We now see that the real gap is the last mile delivery – and we are strengthening our networks and building capacity to bridge that gap.
We have developed a bespoke app that allows us to establish control towers that oversee the deliveries in real-time, with track & trace, e-PODs, temperature monitoring and visibility of stocks and orders at the final mile.
This gives the health centres the ability to order online and manage their own stocks as well.
Patients get their medicines at the right time at the right place in the right condition!
The ongoing pandemic has taught us the importance of supply chain resilience and risk management. What did you do to strengthen operations and business resilience during COVID-19?
Shamit Shah: Thanks to our very diverse portfolio ranging from courier services over warehousing to the Ethiopian Airlines GSA, we luckily were able to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on our business.
For example, when passenger flights into, out and within the region were suspended, Ethiopian Airlines was the first carrier to convert passenger aeroplanes into cargo carriers. We thus were able to offer solutions when many other companies got stuck.
In addition, the pharma imports that we handle on a regular basis with our international partners did carry on unaffected. Due to this pharma handling expertise, we were even able to win a lot of additional Covid related imports like PPE and ventilators.
Freight in Time is the only 5PL provider with a network of pharma grade warehouses across East Africa – this means we can offer unique solutions for humanitarian movements and commercial pharmaceutical distributions.
We were facing challenges at the borders as trucks were being delayed while drivers were tested. Certain borders (e.g. into Rwanda) were closed to foreign trucks – so we came up with new solutions to cross-dock containers at the border and to ensure we continued to deliver essential cargo to our clients.
What changes are we expected to see in global supply chain structures and models post COVID-19?
Shamit Shah: There is a dramatic shift in supply chains – a lot of clients realised that a disproportionate dependence on China and overseas suppliers was very dangerous.
We expect to see increased manufacturing in our markets, especially certain critical products such as pharmaceuticals and PPEs.
As a result, there is definitely going to be an increase in demand for high quality outsourced logistical solutions, and we are well placed to offer those bespoke solutions.
There is a bigger focus on the last-mile delivery. Clients are demanding accountability, transparency and visibility in their supply chains.
While passenger figures have dropped, the demand for airfreight has skyrocketed – and once again, we were well-positioned to offer these solutions.
Ultimately, with the overall global recession, most businesses, whether involved in local, regional or global supply chains, will likely have to downsize or diversify their portfolio. A black swan event like this will have many players in the sector rethink their structure and lead to businesses adapting leaner and more asset-light structures that allow them more flexibility.
You can contact Freight in Time at [email protected].