AVIATION
Rerouting the
supply chain
The Dubai World Central is not just a new airport beside a port and a freezone with a single customs window. The big picture of this facilitated logistics platform is in its being the biggest catalyst in changing the traditional international supply chain route. Munawar Shariff spoke to Mohsen Ahmed, VP Logistics District, DWC about the masterplan
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raditional supply chains have big conglomerates with distribution centres in the main hub of a region to serve the rest of the region. The Middle East falls under Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) so usually companies serve the region out of Europe. With Dubai’s new port, air, sea, road connectivity means cargo could be on its way within a few hours of reaching Dubai translating to enormous benefits for international supply chains. Dubai is where the region needs to be served from.“Many companies are moving their distribution
80 GSC YEARBOOK 2015
centres into DWC. Hino has done that last year. Many others are doing it too,”says Mohsen Ahmad, VP Logistics District, DWC. However this achievement was a part of the masterplan.“The plan of having an airport next to Jebel Ali freezone was there from Sheikh Rashid’s time. The area was set aside for it from then,”says Ahmad.“It’s just recently it was fine tuned and designed to have a connected airport and seaport. But now, it’s more than that because we now want to connect this infrastructure with the rail in the future.” “Today it looks simple but when we started off in 2010, we had few flights a day, the