TNT strengthens foothold in RI's express delivery market

TNT is one of the world's largest express delivery and logistics services, competing against DHL, UPS and Federal Express.

Established in Australia, the now Netherlands-based company has been operating in Indonesia since 1979. It has been expanding its network in Indonesia since last year and provides special delivery services for its customers. The Jakarta Post spoke to TNT country general manager Peter Langley.

Question: What is Indonesia's express delivery and logistics services market like?"

Answer: We're in markets all around the world, some of the markets are growing, and some of the other markets are growing even much more.

And we look at places like China, Vietnam and Indonesia. They're places we need to be, because we know those markets are growing very quickly, for import, export and domestically.

We want to be here, and we want to grow our infrastructure. Indonesia is a very important platform as part of our the global network.

Indonesia also has a very big market for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). I come from 10 years in the express delivery business in Australia, and the SME business is very big there, and I come here, and it's even bigger.

And now because of the Internet, and the expansion of the many trade shows that the government and the industry bodies put on, many companies in America, Europe, and around the globe are buying Indonesian products from small manufacturers. There's fantastic growth there. And it's not only the large companies, but also between small businesses to businesses, opening up the market even further.

And how has business been for you Indonesia so far?

Up and away, I can say. We had a good year last year, and also this year, and next year we believe it will be even better.

We've opened gateways in Jakarta, Balikpapan, Surabaya, and Denpasar. And we're expanding our footprint through dedicated depots in Jakarta, Bogor, Karawaci, Cibitung, and Kelapa Gading.

We're expanding on how we can get to the customer quicker, so we can get their goods faster to the airports wherever they are in the archipelago for export.

Both of our delivery and logistics businesses are growing very well, and we just look to expand both businesses as fast as we can. We see our latest network and special services will take off as well.

Any particular plans in the near future to further grow your business here?

We're looking now at the possibility to open some more gateways, but still doing the numbers, just trying to work through what's being manufactured where, and what's the export capacity.

We're looking at Medan, maybe, for exports of bird-nest products to Hong Kong and China, and also other areas.

We will continue focusing on and expanding our gateways, because every business in every region of Indonesia wants to be the fastest.

Other players in the delivery business have a dedicated aircraft that they run and leave from Jakarta. But if you have to bring everything here to fill the plane up to send it away, then it doesn't give you the flexibility. We, on the other hand, can just go from Denpasar directly to Singapore, or Japan, or Sydney, because we have our gateways there and can pick out of the 100 flights per day in those different places.

We are investing a lot of money in different areas in Indonesia, because we know that growth will continue to pick up in the next few years for sure. If the businesses here in Indonesia can do more business globally, it will mean more turnover for us.

What other advantages will you be offering to customers in comparison to your competitors?

We are basically doing business for our customers. We have to give our customers the best service we can and give them the most opportunity and flexibility to get to their own customers.

We also have a much more direct and personal approach with our customers, to find as many businesses as we can.

That is why we go to our customers proactively, we call in directly and talk to them, rather than they come to us and say what they need.

We talk to our customers, every two months we'll give them a call, to see what's happening with their businesses. Are there any new opportunities that we can help them with. What can we help you out with?

That's what we do as an advantage. This system has been proven to work for our global network operations, and we believe in such personal-style partnerships.

So you're quite optimistic about doing business here. Many people say Indonesia's business climate still has many problems.

We work very closely with customs to work out any problems. Customs is now introducing a new national single window system for electronic commerce, and they are asking us to help them add anything to their blueprint to make the customs system faster.

Unless Indonesia can be competitive in time and speed to clear customs, then it will be difficult. But what I'm happy about, and what we see, is that the government is investing money to build up that infrastructure in IT so that they can serve businesses in Indonesia better. The system they will have, in terms of tax, duty payables, and the speed of transactions, will be as good as Singapore.

We also do a lot of trucking between our 18 depots across Indonesia, and we don't face any problems of illegal fees. But maybe this is because we are an international company, I don't know about the other companies, but we can operate well without such a problem.