After a 2 ½ month recruitment campaign, The Cooperative Logistics Network’s ‘Founding Members’ have begun operations this week.
“Monday was the beginning of The Cooperative. The day when all our members will start contacting each other and begin building the foundations of those important business relationships, which will be cemented when agents meet at our annual meeting in May next year,” said Managing Director, Antonio Torres.
The founding members are located in 60+ cities across 50+ countries, together boasting a total of 5000+ employees and a sales turnover for 2013 of over 550,000,000EUR.
“Since September, we have been inundated with applications because, I believe, independents understand they are in a ‘cooperate or die’ situation. No company wants to be left out in the cold when the multinationals are conveniently gaining 1% of the market annually,” explained Managing Director, Antonio Torres.
Mr Torres continued, “Hand in hand with cooperation is intimacy. Cooperation simply won’t work if a network is overcrowded which is why we are only allowing a maximum of 3 agents per city with the exception of the largest cities allowing 5.”
This capped non-exclusive network has hand-picked freight forwarders in each major air/seaport which will cooperate in a financially secure environment to reduce costs and risks and grow their businesses together to compete against the largest multinationals.
“Our team has been working hard to whittle down the hundreds of companies that applied to only the best to begin our network operations,” said Torres, in fact; only 3/10 applications have been approved.” One such chosen company is CASCO SOLUCOES LOGISTICAS LTDA in Curitiba, Brazil.
“The Coop is a serious network with hard-working experienced professionals both running it and members of it. Knowing Mr Torres already has a successful network, means we are comfortable joining The Coop. We are looking forward to increasing our global network with reliable companies. Thus increasing our demand of import and export through them and vice versa,” explained Kleber Fontes, CASCO’S Commercial Manager.
Antonio Torres invites interested agents to get in touch. “Whilst we have filled our founding member positions, we are of course accepting new members and we welcome any agent who shares our ethos that cooperation is the key to success to contact us.”
