Kai Olschner, DP World’s global vice-president of supply chain engineering, talks major investments and a unique service for Moroccan exporters
What is your role at DP World, and what is your background?
Kai Olschner: I am not only at DP World Europe, but I also report to Dubai and am responsible for the end-to-end solutions department for DP World, so perishables is one of the things that I cover – and it is a growing market.
Originally, I was from the automotive industry, and coming to this business makes you realise one simple thing – that people need food. And often you forget that simple premise. You go to an Aldi, a Lidl, a Marks and Spencer, a Tesco, and you just buy food, but where it is growing, where it is being sourced from, what kind of condition – this is very interesting to see.
It’s awesome to see people from all over the globe, combining and connecting – from Vietnam, China, Turkey, Europe, the Americas – every grower and exporter has the same goal. That is to bring, by logistics, these best-quality products, which can be difficult and delicate to handle, to the markets.
Where are your most exciting developments this year?
KO: What’s new? Well, we are working in a multi-billion-dollar company, every day there is something new that comes up. Not only are we handling 10-12 per cent of total trade via our ports and terminals, but we have also developed end-to-end solutions that have helped us become forward thinking and globally active. In the last 14 months alone, we have opened more than 200 new offices, just to support the growth in freight forwarding and transport solutions.
Then there are our assets, where in Europe alone our investments are quite interesting. Some £1.1bn has been invested in our terminal at London Gateway, to become the leading port in the UK for deep sea shipments. That especially applies to the produce industry, as 80 per cent of chilled and frozen export cargo goes via that port. There, we are ready for all changes, such as Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk’s Gemini project.
There are other inland terminals In Europe that have seen development. We have invested €30mn into our terminal in Romania at Aiud, to get ready for services from the Black Sea.
What about North Africa?
KO: When you zoom out of Europe, you go directly to North Africa, and this is our newest scope, our newest product. We want to serve Moroccan fruit and vegetable growers. Customers in the country told us that in terms of trade lanes, they were moving 80 per cent of products by truck up via the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain, France and then distributed in other European countries like the UK and Benelux. However, this is not reliable anymore for many reasons, so we were asked to develop something to support Morocco.
We investigated export trade volumes to better understand the industry and figured out something unique for the country’s fresh produce industry. We put our own vessels on the water now, going from Agadir to London Gateway, our own terminal, where we can strip the cargo and distribute according to the needs of the customer. We are also going over to Antwerp Gateway, where we again operate our own terminal, and we can distribute within the Benelux countries and northern France.
We then go back to Casablanca, taking cargo back southbound, to support the industry there. It is not only growers that have a need, but there are also producers of machinery and farming equipment that need to bring cargo south.
What are the main advantages of this service?
KO: The biggest difference that we offer is that we are building not only an end-to-end supply chain, but we are focusing on the fruit and vegetable industry only. With normal carrier services you are just one customer of many, but this does not meet the specific needs of the industry given the sensitivity of the product in question – shelf-life, speed to market and more. We are also going to reduce up to 70 per cent of the carbon footprint by using this solution.
We are ready, in the peak season, with all the capacity that is required and the equipment that is needed. The service is dedicated to that route to market. The next thing is to investigate other trade lanes, going southbound to West Africa where we are implementing and developing our new terminal in Dakar, Senegal.
Morocco is becoming, in our minds, a kind of centre of gravity for a lot of these trade lanes – a kind of hub, if you will. But it is for products produced and grown in Morocco, not as a transhipment hub like you get at the Port of Tangier.
