Despite a record-breaking 2021, the first five months of 2022 for Cargo Compass SA – one of the country’s largest private freight forwarding companies – are promising an outperformance of last year. The main reason, states Sebastiano Iorio, MD of the Italian-owned company, lies in Cargo Compass’ winning formula of being flexible, pragmatic, competitive and attentive to individual customer needs.

With a turnover of over R2-billion, Cargo Compass SA is the sister company of the Italian Cargo Compass. Nevertheless the company is independent, with its head office in South Africa. This allows the company to create custom solutions for its clients, explains Iorio. In addition, its Italian roots allow the company to be well suited to cater for Italian businesses, being a real insider to Italy’s products and market. This provides the added value of fulfilling customer communication requests with the suppliers overseas, explains Iorio.

Trade between Italy and South Africa has always been very extensive, and a large volume of products required by South African industry and manufacturing, as well as the so-called FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) come from Italy. Products of excellence include metal goods from the Brescia area, woodworking machinery from Rimini, Ravenna and Cattolica areas, ceramic tiles from Modena, and foodstuff from Southern Italy, in particular the Naples area, highlights Iorio.

The war in Ukraine has undoubtedly created congestion in the logistics sector globally, but the effects in SA are so far indirect, states Iorio. In terms of rising petrol costs, this affects the final price of products, and the impact is more pronounced in the case of low-valued items – for instance a packet of pasta – compared to products such as machinery.

Yet Iorio, who started his business with his sister 23 years ago, and now counts more than 400 employees in South Africa, reassures that “opportunities are huge in SA, despite all the troubles”, as evidenced by the number of superlink vehicles purchased by the company, which rose from 2 to 10 in just five years.

Academy to provide jobs for 5000 young South Africans

Meanwhile, the last two years, challenging for many, have been a boost for Mediterranean Shipping Company, thanks to the new ultra-modern Nelson Mandela Passenger Terminal recently built in Durban and the Shosholoza Ocean Academy (SOA).

The latter is the first fully-owned MSC initiative in South Africa - where it currently counts 1650 employees - designed for the training of young South Africans who will be appointed to MSC’s cruise vessels all around the world, explains Salvatore Sarno, MSC Chairman.

The initiative, which will provide jobs for about 5000 South African young people, is committed to addressing the country’s triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality, states Sarno.

Finally, 2021 saw MSC becoming the largest Container Shipping Company in the world, by adding twelve new 23-thousand TEUS vessels to the fleet and by purchasing 103 second-hand medium size container vessels. At present, says Sarno, all MSC ships are full on all the routes with freight rates are at a very high level.

This article originally appeared in the 2022/2023 Directory of the Italian

ITALCHAM