Playing as a team during challenging times: OQ's key to achieving supply chain resilience

Our job in the supply chain and logistics team is to be an enabler.

Whatever the customer asks, our role is to make sure that OQ can deliver. They are the bedrock of our future – without them, we would lack purpose, and so we invest in our customers and help them to outperform the market.

Fulfilling this role is incredibly rewarding. Indeed, we have been resilient and managed to drive forward the growth of OQ and our customers despite operating in an extremely challenging environment. The pandemic brought many economies and supply chains to a virtual standstill, and most are still feeling the aftershock of recent events which are likely to keep things volatile for some time to come.

When I look back five years ago, our logistics team was created very differently. With a limited product range, small volumes and a handful of markets being served, our supply chain staff totalled just three. Based in Muscat, capital of our home market Oman, we could manage the company’s entire logistics needs.

Fast-forward to today, and a huge amount of growth later, the global supply chain and logistics function now has 34 employees predominantly supported by 25 Omani nationals and including 17 women. . Suffice to say, we have expanded career opportunities for supply chain and logistics professionals, owing to digital technologies advancements and heightened focus on supply chain demands across the globe.???

We now have people in Sohar and Singapore as well as Muscat, with the logistics function being divided in half to better meet two distinct objectives – delivering products and procuring logistics services. The scope and nature of logistics tasks have been recalibrated to fit short- and longer-term goals, while technological improvements were targeted to improve efficiency and unlock agility within the team.

The development and growth of the team has been envisioned and executed in line with the establishment of OQ’s new Liwa Plastic Industrial Complex plant (LPIC), a huge milestone which has ramped up our volumes.

Being able to deliver the same efficiency at larger scales for our partners required us to consider risk factors long before the plant came online, with the pandemic and turmoil in the shipping world presenting all manner of disruptions to our plans. We needed to pivot and adapt at an unprecedented rate.

Some challenges persisted. For example, we encountered limited shipping and container allocation for certain destinations from the second half of 2021 until the first half of 2022. Meanwhile, market uncertainties caused by ongoing lockdown disruptions and geopolitical tensions continue to present difficulties. ?

These situations have required us to be agile and innovative, drawing on our experience to create and execute alternative plans to ensure OQ products reached our customers. We engaged stakeholders, made adjustments to product allocation and sales, and provided forecasts to shipping lines in order to secure containers and spaces.

Because of this work, the situation remained manageable and is improving with each passing month as we secure more space and allocations from shipping lines.

The wider impact on generating In-Country Value

As well as enabling us to fuel the growth of our customers and their needs, OQ’s remarkable development is injecting growth into the wider economy of Oman and helping to support vital global industries, from shipping and beyond.

Currently, OQ ships around 4,000 plus containers per month, a rise of more than four times from the 900 we were managing a few months ago.

Inevitably, this means we are working with and providing business to a greater number of local and regional SME partners. We have gone from working with five trucking companies to seven – this includes four operating in the sea container business and another three which handle our inland trucking needs. Regarding the latter, we increased the number of trips carried out within the GCC from 120 to 600 per month.

The impact of this extra activity is widespread and varied. Through OQ’s accelerating business activities, we are supporting the production of more trucks and the employment of more drivers, schedulers, and other positions at these companies.

We have also increased our transactions with banking partners, who now handle on average 500 transactions per month – up from 150-200 barely a year ago. Our business with courier companies and customs clearers has multiplied too. ?

Meanwhile, OQ is collaborating with more global shipping companies, the health of which is critical to the wider shipping sector recovering strongly. We now work with 13 such firms (previously five), including world leading shipping lines, who now help us to move 4000 containers per month.

These partners have allowed OQ to increase its international presence by developing supply points at home in Oman and further afield at key hubs such as Antwerp in Belgium and Port Klang in Malaysia.

Gearing up for more growth

Having a presence in strategic local and international shipping hubs is crucial to our promise of delivering to customers all around the world. Included within that is also the obvious - warehousing.

Here, OQ is currently undertaking a new project to increase our warehouse to 120KT capacity, a critical development which will enable us to meet the industry standard of keeping sufficient stocks for 35 days of sales. In the meantime, we are using a 3rd party local storage facility to keep up with demand.

Most importantly, however, and the key to our incredible growth story so far, is people.

Without the skill, dedication and agility of our team, we would not have been able to play that critical enabler role for our partners over the past five years.

We know that attracting, developing and retaining skilled people is crucial to any success we enjoy in the future. That is why we have opened new career development opportunities for local Omani talents, and currently have seven graduates on our books who are undergoing training in customer service, logistics and procurement specialisms. ?

We are also doing this with the bigger picture in mind. As a sector in its own right, supply chain is relatively fast-growing potential in Oman. With our strategic central hub in Sohar empowering our vast global network, we’re supplying the demand to East and West corners rapidly. We foresee a unique economic identity that integrates seamlessly with global production and service supply chains, something which will serve as a key enabler of achieving Oman’s 2040 Vision.?