Coming to its 6th anniversary in the 2024, Ocean Sky Line (OS Line) has continued to enjoy such fantastic growth. This encouraged this ‘under the umbrella of PT Bintang Samudera Angkasa’ company to keep focus on console cargoes and do expansion through adding port of loading and broaden network with new agents globally.
The logistics business of 2023 ran under some complicated challenges. While the situation had just recovered from the effect of pandemic Covid-19 outbreak, other challenges came from growing nationalism and turbulent geopolitics, creating uncertainty around global trade flows, regulations, and contracts.
This triggered rising inflation, fuel prices, labour costs, and interest rates that drove up expenses across the logistics industry. Warehouse space, equipment, and insurance are also becoming more costly. On the other hand, the global trade volume grew static, while on the freight rate, which was so fantastic in previous year of 2022 that gave a huge margin to carriers and logistics operators, was on a free fall.
In general, the situation has made the shipping and logistics back to the prepandemic situation. Compared to the fantastic year of 2022, the shipping and logistic performance in 2023 down significantly. Most of them failed to meet the yearly target and its year-on-year performance down by over a half.
However, some still booked positive performance, including OS Line. “Alhamdulilah (Thanks God) we still enjoyed positive growth within this challenging year,” said Indra Gunawan, OS Line Director.
OS Line, a freight forwarder specializing in direct console business for both export and import, achieved a notable growth in volume and financial performance this year. It experienced a significant increase in handled boxes, with a remarkable year-onyear growth of over 50%.
Most of container it handled are LCL (less than container load). “This is in line Keep Focusing on Console, OS Line to Add Ports of Loading, Expand Agents Network with our vision to be a leading consolidator. And this year we were focusing on handling console cargoes,” he said, adding that in the next years OS Line will continue to expand business on console as its core business.
This fantastic volume growth has helped OS Line to still enjoy a positive growth in net profit. “We enjoy 13% net profit growth, compared to 2022,” said Indra, adding that OS Line also exceeded its yearly target sales. During the year, its total sales reached Rp75 billion, higher than the target of Rp 72 billion.
Add Port of Loading, Expand Agent Network
During 2023, OS Line has added some port of loading at several countries and expanded networks through building cooperation and partnership with some new agents worldwide. These steps have significantly contributed to OS Line volume growth. “Surely, our new ports of loading both for import and export and our new agents as well have significantly contributed to our volume increase,” he said.
For 2024 OS Line plans to add 4-5 ports of loading, including Australia, Barcelona (Spain), USA, and Felixstowe Port, South Hampton (England) in a bid to increase its import volume. “We expect Barcelona as also our new port of unloading, in addition to Hong Kong. This is meant to increase our export volume,” he said.
To reach its export import volume target, both LCL and FCL, OS Line is also eyeing to increase partnership and cooperation with some new agents worldwide. “Now, we partner with agents which are mostly in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. This year, we target to add more agents within the areas, while on the same time we will build partnership with agents in the other countries worldwide, such as in USA, Europe, and Australia.”
“Hopefully, these new agents and new ports of loading will help us to meet our 10% growth next year,” said Indra.
Fast, Flexible, Future
Indra underlined that in running the business, OS Line will take focus on customers to meet their demand. Therefore, OS Line has taken a tagline of: “Fast, Flexible, and Future”.
“OS Line will provide fast service to customers. We also provide flexibility, meaning that we build in more choices and allow for quick and immediate responses to situations that arises. On the same time, we focuses on how the future business of our customers and we will go with them on their future business,” said Indra.
In realizing this tagline, supporting its future business expansion, and improving services to customers, OS Line will soon realize some programs, the programs that have been planned in the last years.
“We will establish our owned customs clearance division, get ISO in management system, and be member of IATA (International Air Transport Association),” said Indra.
