The Hindu Business Line : ‘Slowdown could impact growth of logistics business

Freight forwarding industry would have to come to terms with the economic slowdown and rising fuel price by tightening operational efficiencies and higher volumes to prevent lower profit margins.

The country’s economic growth was robust, albeit the signals of temporary slow down.

In a competitive market such as India, the industry had to adopt cautious pricing strategy, Mr Madhav Thapar, Sub-Regional Airfreight Director (South Asia), DHL Global Forwarding, said. He said the slowdown could impact the growth of the logistics business. But with India emerging as one of the fastest growing economies, in the long run higher growth should offset the temporary setback, he added. “To counter the impact of increasing costs we have to improve our operational efficiencies”, Mr Thapar said.

Greenfield airports

He said the new greenfield airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad with better infrastructure could contribute to the industry’s efforts at curtailing cost pressure with longer runways resulting in higher volume offtake and faster turnaround increasing the topline and the bottomline.

Robust growth

Mr Thapar said with India witnessing a robust growth, forwarding business saw no downturn to its business.

“That is why we want to be part of India’s growth story,” said Mr Tony Widmer, Senior Vice-President and Head Airfreigh, DHL Global Forwarding. Later Addressing a press conference to announce DHL’s opening of the new bonded warehouse-cum-air freight office in the new Bangalore International Airport, Mr Widmer said DHL currently had a 24 per cent market share of the total import and export volumes from Bengaluru.

Optimistic

“We expect to grow over 20 per cent in the next year and this facility at the Bengaluru International Airport is a key component of our strategy for South India.”

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