Schenker Philippines, Inc remains optimistic about its business prospects for the year and expects to grow 12-15% anchored mainly on the ocean freight and logistics sectors.
This is despite a 20-25% drop in first-half airfreight volume from the electronics and semiconductors sectors, the company’s biggest clients.
In the same period, ocean freight and logistics volumes grew 25% and 15%, respectively.
“We are very confident based on our experience in the Philippines the past five years,” Schenker AG chief executive Dr. Thomas Leib said at the sidelines of the recent launch of the company’s Bicutan Logistics Center.
“From only 20,000 square meters of property in 2007, we now have a total of 100,000 square meters of properties and about 800 employees, suggesting further success of our company’s growth in the Philippines,” Leib said.
He noted that the crisis in Europe, homebase of Schenker, is not expected to spill over to the Philippines.
“The crisis is not affecting our operations,” Leib said. “The only affected sector is trucking but limited only in Spain, Portugal, Italy and France and no more.”
He added, “Our Philippine operations have been spared from the crisis.”
The recently inaugurated logistics center boasts 11,000square meters of combined warehouse and office space. It has 13 dock levelers, elevated docking for efficient loading and unloading, efficient utilization of space-block storage, high pallet racking system, mezzanine shelving and temperature controlled room.
It is located two kilometers away from the Schenker Philippines Sucat Logistics Center and Corporate Office officially inaugurated in 2011.
Meanwhile, the Philippine office will also operate a warehouse for one of its clients in Baguio City in the next two months, according to Schenker Philippines managing director Reiner Allgeier.
Together with the Bicutan facility, the Baguio warehouse will be fitted with racking and other cargo-handling equipment at a cost of about P35 million.
“This will be the second warehouse that we will open after we opened our Bicutan facility,” Allgeier said. “These are all in support of a strong first-half performance of the company. We overshot our budget and we are happy about it.”
He added, “We only budgeted for growth of about 10-12% while our growth is already around 12-15% in the first half of the year.”
