By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamas-based logistics provider yesterday said its new supply chain management product could save local businesses “up to 35 per cent” of their current import costs, pledging that it would “open up their horizons”.

Unveiling his firm’s ‘Freight Buddy’ programme, Henry Johns, vice-president of Moseley Lane-based New Level Logistics, said it was targeted at Bahamian small and medium-sized businesses in an effort to help them enjoy some of the advantages afforded to larger importers.

Besides “creating efficiencies and cost savings”, Mr Johns said the company - and ‘Freight Buddy’ - also aimed to educate Bahamian importers, and increase their awareness, of alternative suppliers and routes available to them other than South Florida.

Mr Johns told Tribune Business that ‘Freight Buddy’, which is being launched formally this week, was targeted at small Bahamian businesses that needed to fly over to Florida once a month, purchase goods and then load up a pallet to bring them back.

“With Freight Buddy. We are looking at savings of up to 35 per cent by utilising it,” Mr Johns told Tribune Business.

“We have alternatives to open up their horizons to new suppliers that have cost advantages for them, and the potential of consolidating with our office and warehouse facility in Atlanta, Georgia.”

Mr Johns added that New Level had saved “a major importer”, which it signed up as a client at one of its earlier seminars, 22 per cent - some $124,000 - associated with its US supply chain costs.

He explained that ‘Freight Buddy’ was similar to the ‘Pallet Weight’ service previously offered by Atlantic-Caribbean Line (ACL).

It enabled Bahamian companies to ‘consolidate’ their shipments in containers that also brought in the imports of others, yet each firm was only charged for the space it used.

“Businesses that could not do that on their own now can take advantage of that under the ‘Freight Buddy’ programme,” Mr Johns said.

In addition, New Level would also provide them with lower ocean freight rates, he added, by shipping goods through the ports of Jacksonville and Savannah, Georgia, avoiding ground transportation into south Florida and the higher shipping costs from there.

Mr Johns had previously told Tribune Business that trucking and transportation firms in the US typically charged higher rates - sometimes twice the norm - for moving freight into Florida, as it was seen as a congested transport area with no goods/freight coming back from the Bahamas.

“That extra margin of added costs is a much as 40 per cent higher,” he said yesterday of south Florida. “Now, businesses can reduce that and open up a whole new vista of other suppliers. We need to make businesses aware of these whole new opportunities.”

Mr Johns said New Level Logistics could relieve Bahamian companies of having to obtain US accounts, and obtain the best US ground transportation rates for them.

Noting that US vendors often used the ‘pre pay and add’ system, adding higher margins to their invoices to Bahamian companies for ground transportation, he added that New Level could also help them avoid this.

Mr Johns said he aimed to show Bahamian importers how they could obtain price quotes and “not give up control” of the supply chain, and its costs, to their US vendors.

New Level Logistics will be staging two meetings on Friday, January 18, to explain how the ‘Freight Buddy’, purchase and transportation programme will work.

The meetings will be held at Mario’s Bowling & Entertainment Palace, in the Arcade Room at 11am and 2pm.