South African fresh produce giant Capespan has announced the formation of The Logistics Group (TLG), a new integrated logistics service provider.

According to Capespan, it has spent the last four years investing in the capacity and capability expansion of its logistics operations. These expansions included several acquisitions such as commodity logistic operator, Tradekor, and port stevedoring service provider, Port Stevedoring, to broaden and diversify the value proposition of its logistics business.

Capespan will now group together its entire logistics infrastructure, including its port terminal operator FPT, Tradekor, Port Stevedoring, its Mozambique operations MCT, freight forwarding service provider Contour Logistics and the technology enabled The Logistics Company into TLG as a focused and separately managed business.

Tonie Fuchs, managing director of Capespan Group, explained that its global fruit production and marketing businesses remained the core focus, while its logistics businesses will be consolidated into TLG to ensure a focus-based approach to increased logistical service levels across a broader spectrum of product capabilities and capacity.

“The logistics business in TLG will continue to be managed by Capespan’s current logistics management team, led by retiring CEO Dawie Ferreira, who will be handing over to incumbent CEO Anton Potgieter over the next six months,' Fuchs continued. 'Dawie Ferreira has been at the helm for many years and instrumental in the Division’s diversification drive. Anton Potgieter brings a fresh, hands-on perspective to this highly experienced management team. With the renewed management focus, customers of TLG can expect greater service delivery, across a much broader spectrum of services.

“Significant steps have been taken over the past few years to structure the Capespan Group into two focused business units, the global fruit business on the one hand and the Logistics business on the other hand, that each could pursue relevant growth opportunities,” he outlined. “We have now reached the stage internally where focusing on each business unit can be accelerated, and I am extremely excited about what lies ahead for both Capespan’s global fruit business as well as the logistics opportunities in TLG. Fruit will remain a core logistical commodity for TLG, and we will always remain closely associated, but more focused, business units within a larger group.”

Fuchs said that the newly focused TLG venture will enable and empower Capespan to focus all its energy and resources on its fruit production and marketing businesses, to ensure it achieved its own strategic objectives as a reliable supplier of fresh produce globally.

Ferreira and Potgieter expressed their excitment over the renewed focus within TLG.

“The management team has been mandated to focus on the further expansion of TLG’s operational capabilities and capacity as an integrated and purpose driven logistical operation,' they said in a joint statement. 'Over the last few years, with the support of Capespan, we have radically transformed this logistics business unit into an integrated, multi-modal, multi-functional logistics service provider.

'We are eager to pursue the growth and further integration opportunities within the broader logistics industry for the ultimate benefit of our customers,” Ferreira and Potgieter explained.

Norman Celliers, CEO of Zeder, the parent company of Capespan, said that the step was in line with Zeder’s strategy of creating clear divisional focus within its portfolio companies.

“TLG will aim to position itself as a customer-focused, technology-led and capability-enabled group that provides a broad range of logistical services and solutions to customers across multiple cargo-types and cargo-routes,' Celliers noted, adding that the broader logistics industry offered exciting opportunities for expansion in South Africa and the rest of the African continent and TLG would be well positioned to participate.

TLG will include large-scale port and warehouse operations in the ports of Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth; cross-country warehousing and loading terminals for bulk minerals and agricultural cargo; cross-border and warehouse operations in Mozambique as well as an early stage technology platform for the consolidation of road freight.

The underlying operations will therefore combine large, established operations and infrastructure with a newly created and innovative platform, aligned for an integrated, end-to-end logistical service offering.

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