GABCON plans one-stop logistics centre
Isaac Pinielo | Thursday October 12, 2017 09:54
The plan to set up this project at the current GABCON head office in Gaborone West seems to have been received with great pleasure by the company’s clientele who attended a breakfast appreciation session last week.
Responding to Mmegi Business enquiries, GABCON marketing practitioner, Tutu Lenong said the village, which will be built on a five-hectare plot, would make coordination of processing of receipt and dispatch of cargo easy.
“This will be an integrated logistics centre capable of handling multimodal transport namely road, rail and sea, focusing on multimodal freighting, transit and value adding services,” she said.
According to Lenong, the first objective is to facilitate efficiency by having all terminal supporting services and processes under the same roof and in one area, instead of having them to travel long distances away from terminal just to release cargo. “For instance, GABCON will be shipping lines, freight forwarders, customs services, clearing agents and others,” she said.
Secondly, she added, it is to provide infrastructure so that supporting service providers are equipped appropriately for delivery of service, for example, weigh-bridges, warehouses and other value-added services, which meet their service expectations.
Lenong further said the freight village will be an expansion of the current set-up, which intended to facilitate efficiency of the existing operation and introduction of other value adding services.
She noted that movements of imports and exports are critical to any forward looking nation that purports to play in a global village, stating that an efficient logistics centre capable of handling multimodal freighting and transit is critical.
“As it is necessary for Botswana to participate in international trade and moving cargo is core to any international citizen,” she said. Lenong highlighted that the absence of a dry pot or terminal, which connects directly to the sea and other countries, disadvantages importers and exporters.
She said GABCON continues to invest in infrastructure and processes to improve their service, adding that it is a lot cheaper to move goods by rail and sea.
“GABCON offers customers an opportunity to reduce their distribution cost moving goods both locally and internationally as intermodal logistics services are competitive,” Lenong said.
She said the products and services being offered include deliveries of containers from the terminal to the customer’s premises, handling of containers, storage of containers, which is free for the first five days, as well as equipment hire, moving of containers by rail, and placing containers on the ground at customer’s premises, and sale of second hand containers and weigh-bridge weighing services.