Express parcel services body helps ensure a smooth flow of trade
When was Saepa founded, and what is its function? Saepa was founded in 2004 when two courier representative bodies the Courier Action Group and the SA International Courier Association (Saica) came together. It is a registered Section 21 company with an elected board of directors. Saepa has close to 100 members, representing the largest international and local players, right down to the smallest brokerage operators and owner/operators from the informal sector. Our primary role is to represent the interests of the express delivery industry by communicating positions to legislative and regulatory officials, to provide a forum for the exchange of information about trends and developments within the industry, and to promote the use of express delivery services. Specifically from an export perspective, Saepa interacts daily with customs to ensure a smooth flow of trade. Who regulates the express parcel industry, and what does this mean to the export market? The Postal Regulator is responsible for regulating the postal sector, which is made up of the traditional postal services that are reserved for the South African Post Office, as well as the unreserved parcel sector (loosely defined as non-core post office services, but covering all parcels weighing up to 30kg). It is in exporters' own interests to check that the carriers of their parcels are registered with the Postal Regulator. Illegal operators may have their doors closed, and I'm sure exporters wouldn't want to have their urgent and important parcels involved in a legal wrangle.
Exporters also need to be aware that there is a global clampdown on undeclared dangerous goods being placed on aircraft. This applies to any type of hazardous material, and the shipper/exporter has a legal and moral responsibility to declare contents accurately.
What are the criteria for courier operators to join Saepa, and how does the organisation's relationship with the authorities benefit its members? Any organisation of good standing involved in the express freight industry is welcome to join Saepa. Members are provided with professional service and support in addressing broad-based business issues. This includes advice on global trends, input on proposed legislation, access to legal opinion, guidance on compliance, networking opportunities as well as access to other complementary services.
Membership fees for express operators range from R1!200 to R35!000 a year, depending on the size of the organisation. Associate membership fees are R3!000 a year; this is for those who are involved in the industry, but not as direct operators.
In Gauteng, meetings are held bimonthly, while in Cape Town and Durban they are planned for every quarter. Members receive direct e-mail communications, and have access to the members-only section of Saepa's website at saepa. org. za.
What are the dominant export destinations your members serve, and what difficulties do courier companies face when exporting to these areas? Globally, more than 50% of trade takes place with your regional neighbours, and express volumes follow this trend. The largest individual markets would be those members of the Customs Union (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, and Swaziland. ) Market growth to these areas is fairly static.
Further afield, African destinations tend to be more complicated to deal with. The express industry relies on efficient and relatively unfettered trading conditions, with modern and enlightened customs authorities. Sadly, outside the southern African environment, these conditions do not prevail and shipping is complex and time consuming. Nevertheless, traffic to overseas destinations is growing at a healthy rate, and trading conditions are highly favourable and geared to export and import.
How has the export courier industry adapted to meet exporters' current supply chain management needs? Globally, it is the stated goal of the industry to make deliveries within 48 hours (that's from pick-up to delivery). In reality, this really applies to the First World, since as mentioned previously poor trading environments and inefficient bureaucracies in most of the Third World make this impossible. As with any supply chain, the problems lie in your bottlenecks or disconnects. The industry, to continually meet the demands of customers, has to continually work hard to eliminate these. This means that organisations such as Saepa around the world are continually negotiating with authorities to ensure bureaucratic bottlenecks are minimised.
Individual express operators have spent billions of dollars on information technology, not just to track and trace parcels, but to provide exporters with on-line shipping tools to manage their shipping. Integration is the name of the game seamless movement of parcels along complex supply chains, linking call centres, couriers, remote locations, hubs, owned aircraft and scheduled airlines.
Has the international express parcel industry grown much over the past few years? International shipments grow globally at around 15% a year. Domestic growth in developing markets, such as SA, is about 20% a year. There is a move towards faster and more reliable transportation of goods, caused to some extent by our impatient I need it now! society, but other critical supply chain factors such as the cost of goods sitting on warehouse shelves and redundancy makes slower transportation a less attractive option. Express, while still a small percentage of the total, is the fastest growing segment of transportation.
What influence does Saepa have on trade policy? We have daily contact with customs, which has several task groups dealing with different issues. For example, our team meets monthly with customs' stakeholder forum, which is strategic in nature. Others deal with specific projects that are on the go, some driven by customs and others by local port management. SA is signatory to international trade agreements and we need to watch these to ensure our members and their customers derive value out of them. Customs themselves are signatory to international agreements, and we need to ensure that these are adhered to, again to drive value for exporters and carriers.
The list of current issues often seems limitless the industry deals with postal health authorities, who are concerned with the illegal import and export of scheduled drugs, among other things; with local narcotics agencies; with Interpol; with the Civil Aviation Authority on aviation security; with Acsa regarding premises and airport security; with training authorities for industry standards; and so on.
How important is Saepa and the express parcel industry to SA's exporters? The Wall Street Journal once named FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith the man who most changed the way America does business" in recognition of his creation of the overnight express market. That says a lot! While it is true to say that electronic media have replaced physical transportation of documents to a large extent, there is no substitute for the physical transportation of goods.
Surprisingly though, there are still a tremendous number of documents moving. But it's not just speed; it's also absolute reliability, peace-of-mind transportation.
The provision of real time information about a parcel's status is vital, some of it simply to satisfy customers' thirst for information, but more meaningful for the planning of vital business processes. Take the example of a factory production line at a standstill because they are waiting for a vital replacement part to plan the repair, plan the uptake of the line and plan your appropriate labour requirement requires information. When will the shipment be here? It all starts with that vital information provided as a standard offering by your express company.
