What do chocolate bars, priceless works of art and a helicopter have in common?
All of these items have been transported by Able Logistics Group, a freight-forwarding company based in the UAE that reported double-digit growth even when trade volumes hit rock-bottom after the global downturn.
The story of how the company prospered, as some of its competitors folded, involves help from events in the region, an investment from a private-equity firm and a focus on the most profitable freight routes.
When Able Logistics started up in 2001, the company had just three employees - two veterans of the industry who launched itand their secretary. As it grew, the company chartered its own aircraft and hired more staff, eventually branching into warehousing in 2005.
"It was providing real logistic services. It wasn't just freight-forwarding," says Stephen Dessurne, the deputy managing director at Able Logistics.
At that time, there was a lot of work for a logistics company in the Middle East. Although Able Logistics did not transport military goods, it did specialise in forwarding freight such as foodstuff and humanitarian goods needed in relation to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The cash generated from this side of the business helped Able Logistics to branch out into other profitable markets.
"What it allowed us to do was create some cornerstones for our business to be able to bounce off that and develop into other areas, which was the road transportation around the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Africa," says Mr Dessurne.
But the biggest factor in the success of Able Logistics was securing an investment from GrowthGate.
Neither party will reveal the size of the private-equity company's investment, except to say that GrowthGate acquired a 49 per cent stake in Able Logistics and subsequently increased its holding to 57 per cent.
"Able was a perfect candidate to GrowthGate's buy-and-build strategy," says Joelle Juvelekian, the managing director of the investment advisory team at Keystone Equity Partners, a company that manages the business of GrowthGate. "[Its] management team successfully grew the operations and delivered a fivefold increase to its bottom line since our entry."
The increased working capital allowed Able Logistics to charter bigger aircraft, fill them more easily and take longer-term equipment leases.
For the future, the company intends to focus on three markets: Abu Dhabi, mainly because its logistics industry is still developing; Saudi Arabia, because of its immense size; and Iraq, because of its potential.
"There are lots of plants and machinery going up [in Iraq]," says Mr Dessurne. "Construction is going to come up now. When the internal politics is sorted out, [Iraq is] just going to … boom. And it will make what happened in the UAE from 2006 to 2009 seem small."
Some of the markets in which Able Logistics operates have their own challenges. In this regard, Saudi Arabia is significant because of the size of the country and the tough logistics competition there.
Meanwhile, in Bagram, Afghanistan, Able Logistics has its our own ground team handling its cargoes.
Because of the security situation in Afghanistan, "you never want to be in the wrong place at the wrong time", says Mr Dessurne. "There's no night flying, so if you don't turn it around before the sun disappears, you're stuck there, and you don't want that."
In Africa, where Able Logistics delivers goods on behalf of an electronics consumer to 21 destinations, in some places it learnt a hard lesson about packaging.
"The losses [through theft] were becoming unacceptable," he says. The company now gets around the problem by covering cargo in black shrink wrap and attaching a neutral label.
"I don't like to use the phrase 'we chase the dollar', but we certainly go for yield-paying business," says Mr Dessurne. "Why should I move a 40-foot container to Hong Kong for US$5, when I can move a 40-foot truck to Iraq for $1,000? You've got to work a bit harder at it, but the returns are much better."
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