Ahlers targets new growth market in Southeast Asia in partnership with KBC

With a history stretching back 115 years, Ahlers is an established name in the Antwerp logistics and maritime industry. The company is increasingly focusing on Southeast Asia as a growth market. KBC Commercial Banking’s local presence there means it plays a crucial role in this project cargo and forwarding specialist's strategy. ‘Our presence in Southeast Asia isn’t focused on acquiring new customers, but on providing maximum local support to our Belgian companies.’

Those services cover just about every aspect of logistics, a legacy of the company's long history. But Chantillon emphasises two main pillars. The first is project cargo. ‘We offer a total logistics service package for large, complex industrial projects’, he explains. ‘It’s about much more than just shipping containers. Our expertise in that particular niche is greater than that of most major players, and we are also bigger than our local competitors. Our goal: to become a global leader in this niche.’

The second pillar on which Ahlers builds its strategy is classic goods forwarding, but with a clear choice of those sectors in which the company has experience. ‘That is mainly everything to do with consumer goods’, Chantillon clarifies. ‘From that core expertise, we can then expand into related sectors.’

Ahlers already has extensive experience in logistics in numerous challenging regions, starting with the former Eastern Bloc countries and the seven 'stan countries' in Central and South Asia (Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan), and on to the Far East. Ahlers can count on its principal banker KBC to support its further expansion.

‘KBC Commercial Banking focuses on SMEs and family businesses’, explains Andrew Egan, General Manager of KBC Asia Pacific Branches. ‘We do also serve some very large multinationals, but they are not our core focus. Our Asia Pacific operations offer the same service as in Belgium, but adapted to the often more complex local context.’ For Ahlers, that modus operandi is an absolute necessity. ‘The big multinationals can just leverage their advantages of scale when they start operating in a new country’, says Egan. ‘But it’s not easy for a player like Ahlers to hook up with the region's major banks for its financing needs, because they are usually used to dealing with much larger customers.’

Andrew Egan, who operates from Singapore, again clearly emphasises his mission. ‘I am not there to bring in new, local customers for KBC Commercial Banking. I am there to be able to offer locally the service that customers like Ahlers are used to receiving from us in Belgium.’ That means classic services: working capital support and general financing that the local major banks can never provide. In addition, Egan and his team also provide administrative support in countries where it has no physical presence, such as Vietnam.
Some of this may seem obvious, but Egan emphasises the complexity of Southeast Asia as an economic region. ‘Depending on how you demarcate the region, the large common denominator 'Southeast Asia' covers at least 38 countries, often with wide mutual differences.’
Roger Chantillon confirms: ‘What works in Vietnam, can't simply be copied to, say, Indonesia’, he argues. ‘That’s also why we are taking things one step at a time. We will start with Vietnam, where a lot of parts assembly is already taking place involving parts coming from China, which then have to be shipped to Europe and the US.’ KBC is closely involved in our operations in China, which is an added value in helping to understand the local rules.

It is a service that Ahlers greatly appreciates, confirms CFO Nikolas Rosseel. ‘At KBC Commercial Banking we found the service and help we needed to meet local compliance requirements. That’s not a given in countries like China and Vietnam, where we created a new local hub in Ho Chi Minh City this year. It’s especially nice to have someone in the region who is on our side who knows and understands our needs.’

Needs also increasingly revolve around sustainability. Ahlers believes the demand comes mainly from the market itself. ‘Our customers are increasingly looking for solutions that go beyond pure logistics’, notes Chantillon. ‘We develop disruptive logistics solutions for our customers, reducing the carbon footprint through digitalisation and supply chain optimisation.’ It sounds complex, but it can also be surprisingly simple. In fact sometimes it’s even easier than we thought: ‘Instead of three truck routes, we now use the train for two of them.’

Ahlers and KBC both see opportunities in a green supply chain. ‘There are some obvious things, such as coal for example, that KBC will clearly no longer invest in’, concludes Egan. ‘But we should not blindly walk away from sectors just because they have a carbon footprint, such as logistics. There’s no point in us going 'cold turkey' and just giving up on them. Our job is to guide them in the green transition, because there are lots of opportunities there.’