SDV Transami, an international freight handling company is set to re-brand its name to Bollore Africa Logistics (BAL). This was announced by the company’s Executive Vice President, Dominique Lafont after meeting with the Minister of Finance, James Musoni.
SDV Transami, an international freight handling company is set to re-brand its name to Bollore Africa Logistics (BAL). This was announced by the company’s Executive Vice President, Dominique Lafont after meeting with the Minister of Finance, James Musoni.
"SDV Transami has been operating in Africa for over 65 years, and we operate in 41 countries in Africa but the brand name has been different in all countries we operate in, so we are acquiring one brand name to all countries we operate,” Lafont explained. According to Lafont, Africa is growing and is integrating with the rest of the world on an astonishing pace.
"So the meeting with Minister was to officially introduce our group to him and ask for full support from the Ministry,” he said.
Lafont also said that the meeting with Minister Musoni was to get support from the government and be assured that the group has full support.
The SDV Group, which is French owned, was also worried that the strained relationship between the French government and government in Kigali would affect there operations in Rwanda.
The SDV Group officials were asure that they can continue to working effectively since they have been operating in Rwanda since 1965.
During a recent press briefing, the officials also said that Kigali is going to be their trade and business corridor for the region and that logistics would be handled from the Rwanda office.
"We are building a port (Port Du Nou) in Congo Brazzaville where we will create a gateway to Dar Salaam then Kigali. Kigali will be the harbour for the cargos for the region,” Tony Stenning the Regional Director East African Zone revealed.
Last year, SDV built an Inland Container Depot (ICD) which is helping them handle cargo. Before they the group was mainly a clearing and forwarding agent.
Rodolphe Kerbukuswa, General Manager SDV Rwanda said, "The building of the ICD has been a great opportunity to us, it has increased our profile, it has made us to operate purely and we are not looking at making profits but we are looking at the spread handling and full coverage of logistics.”
According to the EVP, the reason for building the ICD in Kigali is that Rwanda has a very big advantage over other neighbouring states. Rwanda is officially bilingual state which gives Rwanda a great advantage on growing of business.
SDV is an International group that handles Logistics.
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