Agile forwarding: How top forwarders innovate in the Middle East

Changing times and needs

In addition to the Middle East’s important role in connecting the world’s various regions by air, the region has its own particular needs for airfreight. As the Middle East is a major region for oil and gas development, Crane Worldwide had an edge among forwarders based outside of the region thanks to its Houston heritage. Although Crane’s Nazzari said the region has been among the latter development regions for the company, “being a Houston-based company, [we were] very tight with the oil and gas and the energy industry in the first phase but are now expanding into other vertical markets.”

“We’ve always had business in the Middle East from day one, from 11 years ago,” Nazzari said. “But you know, at the beginning we routed that business through a channel of various agents located in the various countries in the Middle East.”

That is slowly changing, as Crane Worldwide has begun to open offices in the region, beginning with the United Arab Emirates four years ago, then a Saudi Arabia office in 2018, and more planned for Bahrain, Qatar and Oman over the next three years.

Agility Logistics, already based in the region, is expanding in a different way – late last year, the company announced a $100 million investment in Shipa.com, and thereby betting big on what Agility’s Al-Saleh calls a “digital-first platform” designed to tap into, and eventually become the industry standard for, the SME market in the Middle East.

Small and mid-sized enterprises, big opportunities

“The SME market is growing when it comes to cross-border commerce and is doing so at a rapid pace,” Agility’s Al-Saleh said, noting that expectations that the market will continue growing was behind the decision to launch the Shipa platform in 2018.

“Agility spotted a gap in the market as SMEs were looking for services relating to e-commerce, delivery and online freight booking” – demands met by Shipa’s three business units Shipa Freight, Shipa Delivery and Shipa e-commerce.

Of the three divisions, Shipa Freight is specifically tailored to support SMEs. Al-Saleh said its offerings are similar to Agility’s but aim to provide the same services Agility offers to its medium and large companies to SMEs.

“Shipa Freight is for smaller companies that don’t have access to the services or the technologies that larger companies do,” she explained. “Previously, SMEs would be more likely to work with a smaller forwarder, but with Shipa Freight they can now work with a large global freight forwarder, helping to establish their place in the industry.”

With Agility only announcing the investment late last year, there is still time for forwarders to develop services to help smaller businesses promote their products on a global stage. “Players in the industry are still very nascent. A lot of people are dabbling in the SME freight forwarding space, but no-one so far has emerged as a clear leader,” Al-Saleh explained. “This is why we’re really excited about the potential of Shipa Freight as the world’s most comprehensive online freight platform.”

Crane Worldwide is likewise moving to build its offerings for SMEs in the Middle East, as Nazzari said SMEs are on track to continue gaining market share in the region compared to the large multi-national and oil companies.

“You need to be able to sell to [SMEs] in order to increase your local economy and local control of the trends,” he explained. Part of the reasoning behind Crane opening local sales offices in the region is to reach those companies where they are currently operating. “Consider that within the last 45 days we added three new salespeople in Dubai and all of them are 100% dedicated to research of SMEs.” In Crane’s view, a local sales force needs to “develop a sales attack covering multi-national and SME needs. This is something that fits into our strategy throughout the whole region, because SMEs are giving us the control in local business to sustain more aggressive strategies, financially, for the big multi-national accounts,” Nazzari said.