Göksel Giritlioğlu, Giritli Global’s Co-Founder, stated that they have overcome the crisis at sea with container investment and created 3 separate action plans against possible risks. Also announced that they aim to complete this year with a 30% increase in business volume and open offices in the USA and China within three years.
When was Giritli Global established? Which areas does it focus on logistics services?
As a company that went into action its operations in November 2020, we are on the way to becoming the new player in the sector with our young and dynamic team. Our company’s main field of activity is shipping agency and freight forwarding services, but we also offer services in the fields of container purchase and sale and ship chartering.
Marine transportation constitutes about 75% of our freight forwarding services. We manage our forwarding services through our Istanbul and Izmir branches.
Thanks to our strong relations with global and Turkish ship owners, we can respond to all demands of our customers in all our service areas.
As one of our main business lines in maritime transportation, we provide agency services to many container lines with our agency offices. Our agencies, located in the destinations where we are strong, are the largest and oldest agencies in their regions today, thus it adds added value to us in our logistics processes.
“We foresee a 30% volume increase”
Which lines and sectors do you mainly provide services? What is your growth plan for 2022?
In maritime transport, we mainly do containerized shipments. We offer full container transportation and partial transportation solutions to our customers in containerized shipments. Our strong areas are North Africa, the Middle East, and West Africa. We are progressing in these regions with a maximum transit time of one week.
Recently, we have started to offer competitive freight rates to our stakeholders in Far East imports with strong agency cooperation. While most of our volume is mainly composed of the construction and white goods sectors, we continue to work with various sectors from textile to chemistry.
We can state that we are handling a significant market volume, especially in the Libyan market. In addition, we are progressing with high volumes in Tunisia, Israel, Egypt, and Algeria. Based on our statistics, which left the second quarter behind, we foresee that we will close the year 2022 with a 30% volume increase.
“We overcame the crisis with container investment”
How did you manage the freight and equipment crisis that broke out in maritime transport during this period? What kind of roadmap did you determine?
The problems of not finding equipment in maritime transportation, we were able to provide solutions to our customers in this process by investing in containers when the crisis first started to be felt. We continue to serve our import & export customers with our containers, with our NVOCC network in the regions where we are strong.
As for the freight crisis, the most important issue we care about as Giritli Global is our relations with the shipowners. In this way, we believe that we have succeeded in making our customers feel the rising freight prices to a minimum with the contracts we had before the crisis.
We continue our container investments for the crisis that is expected to continue.
At the same time, we evaluate all transportation modes with our agencies, especially for our regional customers in overseas destinations with one or two transit ports. We have already determined our roadmaps that will provide advantages to our customers in possible negative processes.
Will open its office in Mersin
What are your medium and long-term growth plans?
We have a young and dynamic team, and we feel the power of this. We currently provide services with 4 offices in Turkey. We will activate our 5th office in Mersin this year. I can also say that it is in our plans to open an office in the USA and China within three years
“We created three separate action plans”
What are the opportunities and risks that arise after the pandemic?
The jams experienced during the pandemic gave us all a significant return afterward. Due to the increase in foreign exchange, a significant increase was observed in the number of exports of our exporters. As we manage the logistics processes of our stakeholders, we can say that this process has been a period of benefiting from the opportunities of the crises for us.
After the pandemic and I regret to say that due to the war in the Black Sea, almost everyone has turned some of their focus to the Black Sea. This region will be a serious market for all sectors in the next 5-10 years.
We have been operating in the maritime sector for two generations.
As seen in the 2008 crisis, serious decreases have always been observed in the sector’s history after these increases. We manage our investments and processes with the plans we have created, keeping this in mind and trying to consider all potential future scenarios. We can say that we currently have 3 separate action plans. I would like to add that I hope those days will not be repeated.
