INTERVIEW WITH ROMAN STAFFA FROM IC CARGO AUSTRIA

Roman Staffa – Business Development at IC Cargo GmbH

International trade, transport and supply chain management is demanding excellent skills in language and flexibility to find opportunities for our customers. Linked into a network built up within more than 30 years in this industry it is my customers and business partners who are giving the proof for good, professional and successful work every day.

1. What makes IC Cargo a preferred partner for global cargo movements?                                                                                                    IC Cargo combines what is needed at present situation in Air and Oceanfreight business. Smart skills and experience for many years on the market to help and guide clients and partners through this rough periode of disruption and unpredictable market situation being small enough to act quick and flexible to the stady changing market but big and smart enough with excellent contacts to the air and oceanfreight carriers to fight for the best price and space options to make your cargo moving at the best conditions.

2. Speed and Reliability are key in your business segment, how do you ensure highest standards?                                                    Actually, freight forwarding is in our genes. Our entire team has been growing up in this industry and all of us do know about the importance of these two factors. There is no need for us to measure and put KPI’s on this as it is our daily living proofen day by day by every single shipment. This lean setup makes it easy for us to concentrate on what we are expected to do by our clients. Taking care of their shipments help and guide them through the obstacles and problems which might occure whilst transport. We know what our business partners do expect from us. This is accessability at almost everytime – quick and suitable answers to their questions with the vast experience of being in this industry for decades already. All of this is supported by a very clever IT system which is easy to be integrated by EDI for bigger clients to make our daily workload more easy, avoid communication mistakes and frees us to talk with customers again about the important matters rather than checking for shipment details.

3. We face an economic downturn presently, after a very hot period in transport and logistics during the last three years, what are your expectations for the year 2023?                                                                                                                                                                    Good point! For the last 3 years our industry went through a very challenging time with all the hickups you can imagine. Nevertheless we all have made good business at the end of the day even this has been thrilling times for all of us. I actually expect a very „dry“ periode in the first half of this year which should bring us back to the old virtues. A good friend of mine once said: „Success in freight forwarding is 1% inspiration and 99% transpiration!“ I guess this brings it to the point. We need to stay more close to our clients and business partners, build up or rebuild personal relationships which we have lost in the times of „home office“ and „video confernces“ and work hard to generate the fruitful soil for the future. We most probably will go through a valley of tears and those who have built up to big structures and overheads will suffer from this now and need to lay off people in the next months to cut cost. We have never done this and are always trying to work as lean as possible which will help us through this tough times now. Anyhow I do expect a recovery of the global market in the second half of the year once we have been more or less able to overcome the first shock of high energy prices and the overfull warehouses have started to empty again.

4. WOF Group was developed out of the booming Central East European market, how important is this region for your business?This region was always important to the Austrian market and has been developing enormously once the opening in the 90ies of the last century. Vienna has been and still is a Hub from and to our neighbor countries and Austrian investments and companies are still playing a major part in this area. Johannes Hammerl and myself have been growing up in this logistic environment and do know about the needs and requirements in this market pretty well. So yes, this is an important area for us which we are trying to serve at our best throughout existing contacts but also new ones to be built up. That is why I do believe in the WOF idea and I am really looking forward to team up with the WOF members from the Central East European area (some of them are good friends and former team members of us…) at the upcoming meeting in Vienna but of course also the ones from the rest of the world.