Winner: Young Achiever

Khaled Fawzy
Founder/Executive Manager
Trimar Forwarding

“This is the project of my life,” says Khaled Fawzy about Trimar Forwarding, a company he set up in Egypt five years ago, when he was only 23. “I had no business background, no business family to build upon and with a relatively small capital of US$30,000,” recalls the winner of the LOG.LEO Young Achiever Award. “I self taught myself all aspects of the freight forwarding industry, and managed to achieve relatively good results.”

Fawzy beams with pride as he describes his success. “Today, the company has over 50 employees, nine departments, two local branches, a warehouse and the first regional branch in Jeddah is about to open by January 2009 with much more expansion plans ahead,” he says. “The growth figures are very impressive, and are climbing in double digits from one year to the next. Our services have been developing, earning us several acquisition offers, and also giving us the chance to compete with multinational companies and take multinational accounts, such as ABB, El Swedy, Cloride, Fine, Bavaria, Hebi, Alcoa and CSI. We currently have over 50 regular customers.”

Fawzy also managed to sign a representation agreement with APL Logistics after competing with several well-established companies in Egypt. For APL, he has developed a 1,530 sq metre warehouse in Port Said to receive textile cargo from local producers for consolidation and export.

In 2005, he also developed a business plan for a company looking to set up a trucking network in Egypt. He was offered the position of Managing Director for the company which would have started out with 50 trucks and trailers, but he turned it down. “I did not join the company because it would have required me to leave my own business and take on the position on a full-time business, which I was unable to do at the time.

In 2007, Fawzy was named the FIATA Young International Freight Forwarder of the Year for Africa and the Middle East. He has also earned a Train the Trainer FIATA Diploma in Freight Forwarding this year, which makes him a certified FIATA Instructor.

So, after all these achievements, does Fawzy still have goals? Of course, he says. “My dream is for Trimar Forwarding to become a global and multinational company.”

And he certainly has the confidence to pull it off. “I hope this does not seem arrogant, but I truly feel that I am my own and biggest role model,” he says. “The belief I have in myself and in my abilities to achieve great things are endless and has fuelled my drive to succeed.”

Winner: Supply Chain Manager of the Year

Hisham El-Sawy
Supply Chain Director
Saudi & Bahrain
IATCO

As Supply Chain Director for IATCO, the distributor for Proctor & Gamble in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Hisham El-Sawy oversees the order and movement of 50,000 TEUs per year. The LOG.LEO Supply Chain Manager of the Year has organised these TEUs so precisely, however, that only 17,000 ever see a warehouse. “The rest we ship from the plants directly to the customers,” he says.

As a member of IATCO, El-Sawy has seen his business double in the last four years. “This was sudden growth,” he says. “Nobody was expecting this. We managed to sustain our service levels and grow our profits. This was huge pressure on everybody. To sell a case is easy, you just take a team of people, train them and go and sell. But to build an infrastructure of warehouses and fleets takes a long time.”

In this time, he has overseen the construction of a 12,500 sq metre distribution centre in Jeddah. “This was a breakthrough,” he says. “It is one of the best in Saudi.”

The company owns hundreds of vehicles, ranging from three to 24 tonnes, but it also leases vehicles. “We own our own fleets and outsource,” says El-Sawy. “Our volume is huge, so we are able to work with both.” He is currently in the process of introducing SAP to manage some of these vehicles, and will start to use SAP for demand planning.

Demand planning can be complicated when dealing with such a wide range of products. “Forecasting depends on the brand,” he says. “We are focusing more now on bottom-up. With some brands like chocolates, they are too sensitive for a push model, we use a pull model.”

Another challenge is keeping his more than 250 employees on the same page. For this, he uses a monthly booklet called the ‘Canvas’, which states company plans. “Whatever we agree on is in this booklet,” he says. “This is the guide. Everyone goes through it and takes whatever is relevant to his function. We guarantee that everyone is working according to it.”

And he appears to be a team player. “I’m very much a people guy,” says El-Sawy. “I like to be with my team. I very much focus on people who are stars. I spend a lot of time on a one-to-one basis with my team. This is what takes most of my time.”

Winner: Innovator of the Year

Wade Thompson
Sales and Marketing Manager
CEVA

When war broke out in East Timor in 1996, food companies supplying the military units were copying Wade Thompson’s supply chain solution. At the age of 22, the LOG.LEO Innovator of the Year had developed a transportation strategy for moving products from Australia to the Sultan of Brunei’s chain of grocery stores through Indonesia’s poor infrastructure. “I then got picked up by TNT and was working on the food and military supply chain to the Indonesian war,” he says. “I ended up moving to East Timor.”

With TNT in Saudi Arabia, Thompson developed the country’s extensive land network from scratch. He also set up IKEA’s home delivery and assembly system in the kingdom.

Today, as Sales and Marketing Director for CEVA Logistics, Thompson continues to create innovative solutions, managing the company’s freight and logistics divisions. “I’m so happy,” he says. “I’m busy as hell, but I’m totally invigorated. I love my job.”

Thompson’s bragging rights include revamping the automated ambient retail system for a major group in Dubai. He and his team designed a conveyor that was able to handle 100 per cent of the diverse company’s brands, everything from ladies knee high boots to small watch boxes. “Based on the back of that, we have then been able to roll this design out with another two Arab businesses,” says Thompson. “This is an innovation that will be coming into the market.”

Thompson makes effective use of technology, in particular, CEVA’s Click software, which tells you exactly where to place a pallet based on its space requirement and rate of use. “We use this software to produce more space,” says Thompson. “Customers before would charge for a full CBM. If a customer only had a half cubic metre of space, we would charge for a full cubic metre and lose the other half cubic metre. Our business was running at a loss through us not being efficient enough.”

He applied Click to a fashion retail customer, with outstanding results. “They were doing just over 2,000 units a day with 13 staff,” says Thompson. “Now they’re up to 12,000 units a day. On a good day, when they’re on overtime, they can go up to 17,000 items, just through the implementation of this IT system.”

He has a passion for fashion logistics and has spent time studying from the best fashion retailers in Europe, including Christian Dior, Zara, Mango, Massimo Dutti and Diesel.

Thompson also has several other innovative projects in the works, but they are top secret until deals are signed and government approval is earned.

Winner: Social Conscience of the Year

Fathi Hilal Buhazza
CEO/President
Maximus Air Cargo

In February 2008, Maximus Air Cargo signed an agreement with the UAE Red Crescent, offering its chartered cargo services at cost for the Red Crescent’s humanitarian missions. “They have appointed us as their carrier to carry all their overseas relief flights,” says Maximus CEO and President Fathi Hilal Buhazza, winner of this year’s LOG.LEO Social Conscience of the Year Award.

But even before the agreement, Buhazza was helping out in times of crisis. In 2007, Maximus, under his leadership, conducted around 65 relief flights, moving approximately 1,540 tonnes of cargo. This year, they have done nearly thirty flights for the United Nations World Food Program, Unicef, United Nation African Union and the Sudan and Yemen Red Crescents. They also ran 43 relief flights from Czech Republic to Sudan to deliver construction equipment for the United Nations, and dozens of flights for the European Mission in Tchad.

Buhazza insists such missions are good for business, even though they do not bring in profit. “The more hours you do, the more efficient you become,” he says.

His Hercules planes, in particular, comes in handy for saving lives. “The Hercules has the capability to drop goods from the sky so can drop goods from the air,” says Buhazza. “It does not have to land to deliver goods on the ground. Just fly over, drop and deploy.”

He gives the example of delivering relief to earthquake-shaken Pakistan. “People were stuck in the mountains. The logistics chain, as it was, was to take the goods, bring them to Islamabad International Airport and then truck them to the mountains. That could take a week! That could be the difference between saving somebody and not saving somebody. With the Hercules, we can identify where the people are, fly over and drop the goods to them directly.”

Buhazza hopes to encourage other companies to follow suit with his Care by Air programme. He will approach fuel suppliers, airport authorities and handling agents, for example, asking them to offer their services at cost for charity flights. In exchange, the suppliers will receive a valuable marketing opportunity and a sticker which reads ‘Care by Air. “I’m 100 per cent sure lots of people will cooperate,” says Buhazza.

So why does he care? “I care, because I would like other people in their situation now to care about me. If there is no mercy in this world, life is not worth it. In Arabic, we say rahma, which means mercy. If you don’t have mercy, then there’s a question mark as to whether you are a human being or not.”

Winner: Lifetime Achievement Award

Geoff Wheatley
Managing Director
SSI Schaefer International DWC

Geoff Wheatley’s career in the industry started in 1968, when he took a job with the South Wales Railway in Australia, where he used his computer background to implement a new telecommunications system for the company. “That was logistics before it was called logistics,” he says of the project. By 1979, he had moved his way up to General Manager in the company.

Wheatley spent the Eighties with a major international storage and racking provider in Australia, and then went on to develop the industry in Southeast Asia. “I coined the word ‘logistics’ in 1983,” he declares. “I used it in my company name then in Singapore. It was MHE Materials Handling and MHE Logistics. Everyone looked at me like I was stupid. I said, ‘This word is going to be much more common and used over the next few years, and within five years there were a million companies called ‘Something, something logistics’.”

He also pioneered the first wireless technology warehouse in Southeast Asia in the Eighties. “I put in the first radio data collection system, with handheld terminals and vehicle-mounted terminals,” he says.

In 2001, Wheatley moved to Dubai to set up Schaefer’s operations with an initial investment of AED10 million (US$2.72 million). “This year we will turn over in excess of 150 million dirhams (US$40.84 million),” he says proudly. He is also opening a new corporate headquarters in Dubai Logistics City and plans to spread Schaefer services across the Middle East, Maghreb and North Africa.

He says he has worked with the logistics community in every country that he has worked, including the UAE’s own SCLG. “I’ve been a member of logistics institutes for many, many years, starting as Chairman of the Institute of Materials Handling in Western Australia in the Seventies. I subsequently became a fellow at the Institute of Materials Handling, which is now the Institute of Logistics and Transport in the UK, and I still am.”

But Wheatley could harldly care about his own success. “My mission is to help young people in this industry,” he says. “I spend a lot of time training. I go from here to other Schaefer companies to train. I love to hear myself speak. I’m the most popular unpaid consultant in Dubai.” He also helped the University of Wollongong in Dubai set up its MSc programme in Logistics, and is currently writing a book about the industry.

“I should have retired,” concludes Wheatley. “Unlike a lot of people, I don’t need to work. Financially, I’m fine. I want to work in this industry. Logistics has been my baby for forty years, and I’ll probably still be talking about it when they nail the lid down on my coffin, you know. I’ll also be telling them how to carry the coffin – ‘Don’t use those rollers!’”