JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia¡ªWared Logistics, a provider of logistics and transportation services for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, recently rolled out its full portfolio of service offerings.
Wared Logistics is a joint venture owned by two of the largest construction and manufacturing companies in Saudi Arabia¡ªZahid Group Holding and Construction Products Holding Company (CPC)¡ªwho have had relationships going back decades. The logistics and transportation partners of Zahid and CPC are Zahid Heanor, a trucking company focused on heavy lift services, and United Transport Company, a full-service less-than-truckload (LTL) services provider, respectively.
Zahid and CPC collaborated on a JV transportation company comprised of Zahid Heanor and United Transport Company in which they were 50/50 partners and both contributed a well-established transportation entity and capital resources to create Wared Logistics, which serves as a holding company.
¡°As this region has started to open up and develop over the last three or four years, Zahid and CPC realized there was some real potential for their area of the world to be a real hub for transportation, warehousing, and logistics services,¡± said Brian G. McHale, CEO of Wared Logistics, in an interview. ¡°Both of these companies own multiple corporations relating to infrastructure, construction, or basic manufacturing.¡±
Underneath the Wared Logistics holding company are four operating companies:
McHale said Wared Logistics has about 1,000 employees, with the majority being part of the Wared Transport and Wared Express units, which were the existing legacy companies with each in business for more than 30 years. The company has between 85-to-95 clients primarily in the construction and consumer products industries, as well as food distribution.
Shipper benefits: ¡°We envision MENA and Saudi Arabia as a very desirable consumer area that [fiscally strong] and has been relatively buffered from the financial issues that have plagued the rest of the economies of the world, with more than $800 billion per year in petroleum and oil profits over the last 30 years that has created a large consumer class of people,¡± said McHale. ¡°Our desire is to manage the importation of consumer products and construction products from the point of origin through the consumption to the distribution of where the product is sold for consumption¡and manage that in a way that gives it total visibility.¡±
McHale also said that being a Saudi-owned company gives Wared Logistics rights that other logistics companies do not have in regards to owning land, distribution centers, customs clearance, and transportation companies.
This is particularly relevant for operating processes, he said, citing as an example how non-Saudi nationals are not allowed into ports, coupled with other restrictions.
¡°This is why we feel we have a real service advantage for organizations that want to conduct business inside of Saudi Arabia and adjacent countries,¡± said McHale. ¡°We have also gone out and sourced best practices and executives from around the world, and we have brought these best practices and technology into Wared while not diluting the potency of being a Saudi company. And we are bringing a level of business efficiency into the logistics area that did not exist here before in Saudi Arabia and MENA.¡±
Another benefit for shippers he noted is that Wared is providing ¡°local knowledge¡±¡ªor the ability to get products into the region and move them around and create the infrastructure for shippers. When a shipper wanted to come into Saudi Arabia in the past, it had to create the entire supply chain themselves, which he said was time-consuming, costly, and nearly impossible to pull off.
