By Moses Ebosele, ebosele@hotmail. com
To sustain faster turnaround of its operations, Sifax Group has placed order for 24 new trucks, four mobile harbor cranes and other strategic equipments.
Already, a subsidiary of the Group, Skyway Aviation Handling Company Plc, (SAHCO) has taken delivery of a fleet of brand new baggage tow tractors.
Addressing Journalists in Lagos,Group Managing Director of Sifax, Adekunle Abdulrazak Oyinloye explained that the resolve of the foremost conglomerate with interest in maritime, oil & gas, aviation, hospitality, finance, haulage and logistics is to satisfy the expectation of customers.
According to the Group, the 25 new trucks will complement 75 others already deployed for various activities.
Oyinloye said:“Aside the increased numbers of bonded terminals, more hands have come onboard to join the Sifax Group project under the five-year strategic plan.
“The plan is, what do we want to be in five years time? It is on account of this that we also veered into the financial services sector with Sky Capital Financing Limited to primarily support the Sifax Group project.
“We are also investing in new equipment to make cargo handling more seamless at the ports. Very soon, four more harbour cranes will be arriving to complement the existing five at Port & Cargo Handling Services (P&CHS). Each harbour cranes cost averagely €4.5m.”
Oyinloye was accompanied by Executive Director, SIFAX Off Dock, Captain Ibraheem Olugbade, Managing Director, Ports & Cargo Handling Services Limited, John Jenkins, General Manager Haulage and Logistics, Adewale Adetayo, Executive Director, SIFAX Group, Tobi Adekunle, Executive Director, Legal Services/Company Secretary, Barrister Tunji Olusinde, among others.
Explaining further, Jenkins said: “These four cranes will help improve our performance and turn around for vessels. They will arrive the country in few months time.”
Speaking on the company’s mid-year performance, Oyinloye said: “In terms of what we have achieved during the first half of the year, it has been a mixed bag. The road has being a major factor in slowing down activities at the port. We wish the road can be speedily restored because that was the pride of our port at some points. A number of our consignment that spend some extra days at the port have no good reason to be there, if the roads are good, the delivery would have been smoother.
“In terms of number, we recorded a slower number of volume but we believe that we can overcome that over the time. With the expanding port activities in other countries, everybody is trying to get smarter. Even the land locked countries are beginning to grow ports.
Speaking on state of the access roads, Oyinloye said: “The task force seems to have some kind of formula in reducing the number of trucks lying on the road. With that, access in and out of the port might improve for the rest of the year and turn around would be better. So, that might speak for higher business volume. But again, the general slowdown in the economy might also temper with the volume that we expect. But, we don’t see a bad year.
“Our haulage business has become a stronger part of us. We have massively invested in logistics to be able to do door to door for our client and we tend to continually do that. We have also invested in massive equipment to be able to support the growing business that we have. We have recorded a number of new equipment to handle berthing vessels and taking consignments to various destinations,” Oyinloye added.
