HOMEGROWN logistics company Black Arrow Express plans to expand its courier services to territories in Asia after hitting breakeven by the end of the year, its chief executive said on Tuesday.
Allan R. Brizuela, the company’s president, said his group aims to capture a portion of the logistics sectors in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore—three markets with huge overseas Filipino worker (OFW) populations.
“First would be Hong Kong because of the density of the Filipinos living and working there. There is also Taiwan and Singapore,” he told the BusinessMirror. “The trigger would be us hitting breakeven, which would be by the end of this year.”
Black Arrow Express, the express courier brand of Airlift Asia Inc., has been in the market for a year and a half now, serving clients mostly in the provinces. It has since become the official courier of e-commerce site Shopee.
Brizuela said his group sees a huge potential for logistics market in the Philippines given the e-commerce sector is quickly expanding, and the requirement for services such as freight forwarding, warehousing, distribution, outsourcing and cargo handling is also growing.
Hence, Brizuela said his group will be on an expansion mode over the next two years.
For 2018 the company has ordered 32 new trucks to build a so-called mega-line haul that will connect Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao.
It will double its total number of trucks for 2019 to further boost its capacity to handle more cargoes across its hubs in the Philippines.
Currently, the company has 2,000 riders placed in 33 hubs across the country, catering to only 50,000 deliveries per day. Optimized, these can accommodate as much as 100,000 deliveries per day.
Brizuela said his company is fast riding the wave of the e-commerce industry in the Philippines, and at one point, has to rethink how to further improve its capacities and streamline processes to meet the growing demand for logistics services.
“The growth of e-commerce is unbelievable—it’s growing by 15 percent month-on-month,” he said.
Total e-commerce sales reached $2.3 trillion worldwide in 2017. At home, the e-commerce industry is expected to amount to $1.63 billion by year-end, with a projected annual growth rate of 15.2 percent through 2022, research company Statista said. With this, the company introduced on Tuesday a mobile application it is currently developing for express-courier services. It is set to be launched sometime this month.
Brizuela claimed the app may be used for pick-up and delivery with the option of dropping off or picking up packages in over 1,200 partner outlets nationwide.
It will also be cashless, integrated with Black Arrow Express’s other platforms, and feature a loyalty rewards program.