Kuwait’s Agility Plans Up To $100m Africa Spend In 2015

Kuwait-listed logistics firm Agility plans to spend up to $100 million in 2015 on its expansion plans, with Africa the main target of its investment, a senior executive said on Thursday.

Among the target markets for the company’s expansion would be Ghana, Mozambique, Angola and Nigeria as they were benefiting from blossoming oil and gas sectors, and growing populations and consumer spending, Essa al-Saleh told reporters at a media event in Dubai.

“Africa is a growing market and it’s one of our last frontiers — we’ve invested but not as much as we would have liked,” said Saleh, who is chief executive of Agility’s logistics unit Global Integrated Logistics.

The logistics unit moves, manages and distributes goods from various industries, including the chemicals industry.

The figure for spending in 2015, which would be almost entirely on organic growth, was broadly in line with that spent in the previous year, he added.

The fall in oil prices in the last few months would have an impact on Agility’s costs, although the savings would unlikely be more than single-digit percentage points unless there was a long-term decline in prices, Saleh said, due to airlines having hedged their fuel at higher costs.

Saleh added that airlines were also shifting from quoting separate pricing for fuel and shipping costs to having one all-encompassing price, which hid the benefits of falling oil prices on fuel costs.

Agility, which has operations in more than 100 countries and is one of Kuwait’s corporate success stories, generates nearly 25 per cent of its revenue in the Middle East and Africa.

Its third-quarter revenue was KD337.1 million ($1.14 billion) and its net profit was KD13.04 million. Agility has yet to report fourth-quarter numbers.