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Moving to Prague made hassle-free

Czech logistics market sees a surge in business

By Adam Daniel Mezei
For The Prague Post
March 14th, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
Judy Anne Santos, Maersk Logistics' business development manager, says her company is using a new shipping strategy to boost business on less-used routes such as India or Shanghai to Prague.
Have you ever attended one of those “world tour” pop concerts? Ever wondered how exactly those big American rock outfits manage to drag their dazzling light shows, their massive stage ornaments and their megawatt speaker equipment safely and smoothly from one city to the next?
Welcome to the business of worldwide freight forwarding and logistics. The Czech branches of multinationals like Denmark’s Maersk Logistics, Germany’s Gebrüder-Weiss, DHL and others have moved things from overseas to the Czech Republic for over a decade.
COURTESY PHOTO
Maersk Logistics opened a new warehousing and distribution facility in Pardubice last month.
As companies duke it out for shipping business, they securely handle your precious cargo, ensuring it gets to its ultimate resting place with hardly a scratch.
While the Czech logistics market is still rather under­utilized, as many in the business acknowledge, it’s certainly not timid, having grown by leaps and bounds over the past couple of years.
Maersk Logistics
  • Tel: 220 397 873
  • Web: www.maersk-logistics.cz
  • E-mail: czslogsal@maersk-logistics.com
  • Market leader with its innovative LCL product, "less than a container load" sea freight Ships anything between 1 and 30 cubic meters (35–1,050 cubic feet) in volume from any of Maersk Logistics' popular trans-Atlantic or Asia-Europe routes
  • Weekly arrivals to the Czech Republic
“Don’t let millions of dollars in sales fool you,” said Judy Anne Santos, the business development manager at Maersk Logistics. “For us, no client is too small. What most people typically don’t realize about Maersk is that we can ship anything from as large as a fleet of brand new police cars to just half a container load of personal effects for, say, a young expat moving from New York to Prague.”
People “see all the large trailers in the yards or our planes at airports, and think that we’re too big for them to even consider,” Santos said.
It isn’t the only thing the firms have to worry about.
Lucie Novohradská, the local marketing manager for the German firm Gebrüder-Weiss, noted that the industry’s growing competition has also brought mixed results. Many Gebrüder clients, Novohradská said, have become increasingly aware of other companies’ offerings. She has noticed that potential clients will occasionally shift their entire shipping contract to a competitor simply due to the narrowest of cost savings.
“We try not only to fulfill all these [customer] requirements, but add personal care to the mix too,” Novohradská said.
Santos echoed Novohradská’s remarks.
“We certainly try to ‘future proof’ our clients. Our aim is to continuously innovate to take as much of the worry out of bringing things from there to here as possible,” Santos said. “If there’s some technological innovation we can offer them to help them do their business better, then we bring it to market as quickly as we can.”
Maersk Logistics is known as a leader in small to midsize shipments. With its new LCL Sea Freight product, shorthand for “less than container loads,” Santos said, anything between 1 and 30 cubic meters (35–1,050 cubic feet) of goods can now be ferried across the ocean to points around the Czech Republic.
“LCL concentrates mainly on loose shippable items. It’s been extremely popular with our growing Asian clientele, who are now sending goods straight to Prague from a handful of Far East terminals,” she added.
Maersk’s LCL, a concept pioneered by the firm’s Denmark office, was created in response to the changing market. The idea, Santos explained, was to reduce the number of times a given shipment was required to exchange hands throughout the course of its journey.
What typically accounts for the higher costs billed by most big logistics firms, according to Santos, is the increasingly expensive insurance premiums they are forced to shell out to safeguard your sensitive merchandise, from retail items to electronics to industrial chemicals. LCL, on the other hand, eliminates the middle man by drastically cutting the number of check points a given transoceanic shipment goes though.
Say you wanted to send something from Asia to Prague. What generally happens, Santos explained, is that the shipment travels by sea to Hamburg, Germany, where it’s unloaded and broken out into different parcels headed for various Central European destinations, such as Prague, Vienna or Bratislava. From Hamburg it travels by truck, where it’s handled yet again before finally hitting your doorstep.
“What our LCL does is minimize potential breakage risks by cutting out as many intermediary steps as possible,” Santos said.  
As LCL grows in popularity, Santos said, Maersk Logistics’ international sales departments have been using the service to stimulate business on some of the company’s “weaker” routes, such as India-Prague and Shanghai-Prague. This month, the company introduced five new shipping routes from Asia, with once-a-week arrivals to the Czech Republic.
The company, which has its Czech branch in Hostivice, Prague–West, is growing in other ways, too. Though the company entered the Czech Republic in 1996, Champagne bottles were recently uncorked for Maersk when it unveiled its brand-new 20,000-square-meter (215,000-square foot) warehousing and distribution facility in Černá za Bory in Pardubice, central Bohemia, last month.
The unit, currently with 96 employees, will continue nurturing the alliance between it and local electronics component giant Foxconn. The Pardubice warehouse, Santos said, will supply timely point-to-point stocking, picking up and distribution of ready-to-market IT merchandise between the Czech Republic and Asia.

Adam Daniel Mezei can be reached at business@praguepost.com


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