Amid Saudi Arabia’s continued economic growth as evidenced by mushrooming mega projects, a myriad of business opportunities materializes for the private sector. And Eirad Holding Co. Ltd. makes it a point to seize the moment. The company is a diversified company that is involved in international and domestic express parcel services, logistics and supply chain solutions, IT, integrated security systems, design & construction, Umrah services, travel & tourism, and telecommunication.
In an interview with Dr. Mamdouh F. Ghazzawi, Managing Director of Eirad Holding, he said the Kingdom’s strong economic growth has fueled the Saudi logistic market. “The dynamics of the logistic market is dictated by the movement of tangible materials. Given that Saudi Arabia is one of the largest geographical spanned countries in the Middle East, and has positioned itself to grow its non-oil sector, this will ultimately lead the logistics requirement to continue to grow, play vital role and will offer grater opportunities to all local and global logistic solutions providers in the Kingdom,” he said.
Eirad Holding’s business acumen can be summed up as what is it now. Today, Eirad has diverse business units that are well suited to cater for the need of the growing Saudi economy and is well positioned to cater to this non-oil boom within the Kingdom. “At Eirad, we adhere to the concept of continuously investing in all the companies within the Eirad Group to strategically position each company to offer a range of services to better serve our customers and their growing needs,” Ghazzawi said.
He forecast that by the end of 2007 “our Express delivery unit will have grown by 18 percent and supply chain solutions unit to grow by 23 percent” from the previous year, with similar projections for 2008. He also predicted a prosperous future in all segments of the industry, adding that import and export air freight will continue to climb, as sell as the requirement for warehouse and distribution capacity as demand increases for fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), pharmaceutical, telecomm, services and automotive consumers.
However, Ghazzawi said there are few challenges that Express delivery and logistic companies in Saudi Arabia face as more and more cross-border business increase between GCC continues. The key issue is cross-border customs clearance. There are still different procedures and requirement from each individual country’s customs regulations and a lack of automation. Another issue is the need for improvements and investment are required in the development of the proper IT infrastructure for an overall improvement in the supply chain management system. Another example is the lack of awareness among the local companies that in addition to having their end products collected and delivered. “They can have a full capability to manage their total supply chain needs from end-to-end via utilizing the expertise of companies like UPS and its supply chain solutions,” he said. “But, probably the biggest challenge is to find and retain industry expertise,” he pointed out.