$1.5M on Second Container Freight Station
ARa-born man has successfully opened his second $1.5million container freight station (CFS) in Lautoka. Cosmos Logistics managing director, Pravin Dutt always had a passion to invest in Fiji because he believed in moving the country forward.
After spending more than 16 years in New Zealand, Mr Dutt made the decision to move back to Fiji with his wife and the company’s commercial manager, Shelene Dutt and
their two children to invest in a freight company.
He was first involved in the business in New Zealand about 30 years ago and in 2016 opened his first freight company in Suva.
The second CFS which he officially opened at Naikabula in Lautoka last Wednesday employs 27 Fijians. “Fiji is an import-driven country and we believe in investing in Fiji,” said Mr Dutt.
“We invested in this during the COVID time where people were scared and literally we had seen many downfalls in Fiji, but we had to do our own business.
“All the time Lautoka was neglected people were only paying attention in Suva so we have centralized everything into one place so that people can feel the same level of service because they were too reliant on Suva.”
He said the company had so far opened up services bringing in containers directly from Singapore, the United States of America and other countries in the Asia region. “The pricing structure of everything was via New Zealand we were too reliant on New Zealand so what we have done is open the consolation service whereby multiple
containers we load and bring it to Fiji and we are doing full container loads as well,” he said.
“We are looking into South East Asia and India as well as Bangkok and also to have a direct service from NZ to Fiji.
“Though it was a hard time and the freight price had increased due to COVID we are trying to reduce all those costs now by opening all direct services and this has really helped the consumers in Fiji during the hard times.”
Mr Dutt has so far gained hundreds of customers since the opening of his Lautoka-based Container
Freight Station.
“The customers are quite reliant on our services, they know that we can deliver, we have done it and we will do it again which has put a lot of confidence back in the economy,” he added.
“COVID has given us a lesson and we are the ones that need to take precautions, not the Government, not the health department we have to do it ourselves.”
He added that the future plan was to upgrade the facility and turn it into a state-of-the-art CFS base.