Michel Vanlerberghe
Last month saw members of IFLN, the Texas-headquartered worldwide network of independent freight forwarders, come together in Istanbul for the rapidly expanding Group ’s annual conference. IFLN president Michel Vanlerberghe comments: “The Istanbul conference was a great success and the opportunity to welcome 19 new members as well as new important partners and agreements with CargoWise, Qatar Airways, United Cargo and London Market Insurance Brokers.
“We are also very pleased with the excellent turnout and the choice of Istanbul for our 20th Membership Conference, and more so by the overall professionalism and high level of exchange during the one-to-one meetings.
“The IFLN Network is seeing a continuous growth; however, our objective is to distinguish ourselves by remaining a quality, sizeable and manageable network, ” he adds.
The highlight of the event was, as always, the numerous one-to-one meeting held between member forwarders, allowing each of them to see just what can be achieved by working together.
Partners
However, also of great interest to the IFLN members gathered in the Turkish capital were the presentations given by those four IFLN partners. According to Simon Clark, CargoWise’s vice president business development Europe, “The IFLN Conference was an excellent opportunity to network with like-minded individuals from the logistics and freight forwarding industry.
“There was a real buzz in the room as the attendees made the most of the few days they had together. Everyone I spoke to was keen to hear about the benefits of working with CargoWise, and it was great to be able to refer to the positive outcomes experienced by the 13 IFLN members who are already using our software.
“The strategic relationship that CargoWise has with IFLN brings the opportunity for IFLN members around the globe to work tightly together on the same IT solution, providing a modern technology backbone and allowing them to work efficiently together and thereby benefit from automation and real-time exchange of information through their operations, ” Clark continues.
He also notes that, “the global reach of IFLN members in conjunction with the CargoWise state-of-the-art software solution means that they will be able to compete with the global logistics providers very effectively”.
It has not only been the speakers who were quick to voice their satisfaction with the Conference. Sanjeev Panthri, director of new member Force Logistics, for example, enthuses: “This being our first meeting, we received an overwhelming response from our colleagues. We expect our association with IFLN to be very fruitful for all of us; together, we can secure more and more business.”
And Eligio Oggionni, managing director of cargo agent APC Asia, talks of “very good contacts with many members” as a result of “the very well organized and successful Conference; we have already started giving business to some of them and this is also being reciprocated.”
About IFLN
The IFLN Network is a unique alliance of specially selected members that work together to provide comprehensive supply chain solutions on a global basis. The IFLN Network comprises 210 specialist freight companies in more than 85 countries around the world. For more information, visit www.ifln.net
