EDITOR’S COLUMN

In June, the day before going to print, Logistics Middle East held it’s first-ever Leaders in Logistics Breakfast. The event underscored the clout that the e-commerce sector now commands in the industry.

Although our keynote Q and A had to become a panel discussion on the last mile, the turnout was still almost as high as the Leaders in Logistics Conference itself, with standing room only when the doors closed. A sector that was once considered niche and only of value to ‘the big three’ (DHL, Fed-Ex and UPS) is now worth US $48-billion in the UAE and Saudi Arabia alone. Perhaps because of this, any serious discussion about it, from top executives within the sector, as we had at the breakfast, is of huge interest to the industry.

The emergence of e-commerce as a serious business, especially for logistics service providers, was brought into sharp focus by the launch of noon.com in 2016, and Amazon’s US $580-million acquisition of SOUQ in 2017, followed by its rebranding as Amazon.ae this year. The industry has now taken note, and much of the discussion at the Leaders in Logistics Breakfast focused on how we could overcome the challenges presented by same-day and next-day fulfilment guarantees, rather than the reasons we cant.

It was a refreshing discussion, and here’s to many more in the months ahead.