Global gathering

Great Ocean Shipping Services

Ajman headquartered GOS came to exhibit at the FIATA World Congress to promote its ship chartering business to a global audience. "The exhibition is quite small, but very international," said Shone Thomas Mathew, assistant marketing manager, Great Ocean Shipping Services. "We've been in touch and met face to face with freight forwarding agents from around the world, so it's certainly been a productive week," he added.

The company was established early 2003 in UAE and India and specialises in the shipping and transportation of heavy lift, RoRo, project and abnormal load cargoes.

"The bulk of what we've been busy with in the past four years has been on the project cargo side of the business, particularly supporting the infrastructure projects surrounding the oil and gas sector," said Mathew.

The group has developed its brand shipping outsized goods around the Gulf and beyond. "We are now doing a great deal of business managing the transhipment of energy related goods, such as pipes and steel that have been shipped to the Middle East from Asia and bound for West Africa," he added.

"As we are regularly managing shipments into India, Djibouti, Sudan and Iran, as well as throughout the Gulf, we wanted to make international forwarders aware of our expertise and the World Congress was a good vehicle for that," concluded Mathews.

Port of Antwerp

"The message we are trying to bring to the World is that Antwerp is genuinely competitive because it lacks the congestion that other European ports are suffering from," explained Annick Dekeyser, promotional manager, Port of Antwerp.

The Port has launched a new dock for container handling to overcome the congestion many facilities are facing on the seagoing side. "We are using the FIATA World Congress to attract a lot of new international shipping companies. Because we are mainly an export terminal we particularly want to attract shipping lines from the Far East," she added.

Last year the port handled approximately 7 million containers last year, but with the new terminal coming on line in the near future Dekeyser says this will increase by more than 100% to a capacity of around 15 million. The Port of Antwerp averages 40 moves per hour through its DP World and Port of Singapore (PSA) operated terminals.

"Antwerp is located 80 km from the sea, and shipping lines often think five hours sailing up the river is an inefficient use of their time and fuel, but the port makes up for this through improved handling, which currently stands among the highest TEU per hour on the continent," she said.

The FIATA World Congress was targeted by the Port of Antwerp promotional team as the right vehicle to generating interest in the terminal, promote recent developments and undertake some truly international corporate brand building.

"This exhibition, with it's specific pull from the freight forwarding industry is very interesting for us because it is much more specialised than many of its counterparts. It's hard from an event like this to judge success but it's certainly put us in touch with our primary target audience," said Dekeyser.

DP World

Global terminal operator DP World took centre stage of the exhibition at this year's FIATA World Congress. "The World Congress is probably the single largest global gathering of logistics and supply chain experts. We therefore feel it is important we support such forums as a lead sponsor," explained Mohammed Al Muallem, senior vice president, DP World UAE. "We share common objectives to facilitate global trade and with DP World having the widest network of all terminal operators, we are very much at the heart of this process," he added.

With the 2007 World Congress being held in Dubai, the home of DP World's flagship terminal at Jebel Ali Al Muallem and his team took the opportunity to use the event as a platform for dialogue especially on a business to consumer level.

"Within the scope of the industry, DP World has a fair brand recognition. Though our typical customer profile is that of shipping lines and carriers, we do have a strong link with the freight community here in the UAE. By being part of the FIATA World Congress we seek to re-inforce our commitment to the freight community in general," he added.

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