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www.canadiansailings.ca Canadian Transportation & Sailings Trade Logistics June 25, 2018
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CONTENTS June 25, 2018
21 CIFFA expands education 39 Forwarders face extinction in
offerings, including further 10 years if they don’t ‘go
forays into online realms digital’, says report
28 Former CIFFA presidents 40 Forwarders far more ‘digitally
reflect on the early days of aware’ than industry
freight forwarding and disruptors believe, says BIFA
CIFFA’s founding DG
31 Calgary-based logistics firm 41 Telephones and emails the
main hurdles as shipping
marks milestone
steams towards digitization
7 Freight forwarders gather for 35 If we could just learn how to
once-in-a-lifetime event 42 Canadian forwarders call for
stop re-keying data!
13 Looking ahead to the freight end to ‘appalling’ costs and
forwarding of tomorrow 36 Conference Agenda ‘broken’ inspection model
19 Women winning recognition for 37 CIFFA elects new President at 43 The future of project
freight forwarding prowess Montreal AGM logistics
45 Oil pipeline approval also generates Federal initiatives 63 Grimaldi’s Grande Halifax christened in Halifax
to protect and restore B.C.’s coast 64 Carrier hopes for price hikes tumble with spot rate
48 Nanaimo lands European auto manufacturer vehicle declines on major routes
processing centre for Western Canada
64 Good times still rolling for container lessors as carriers
49 First Nations Eagle Spirit project offers an alternative shy away from buying
to the troubled Kinder Morgan proposal
65 Middle East transshipment business set to change after
51 Chamber of Marine Commerce: Federal government Abu Dhabi signs MSC deal
should modernize costly Canadian pilotage system
66 Shortage of ships for charter could force carriers to
52 Report on proceedings of Shipping Federation of shelve new services
Canada conference
67 China still powers ahead as Asia-Pacific captures more
54 Maersk expands service to and from Canada contract logistics
55 CN investing in new grain, lumber and boxcars, as well 67 Investors worry as major box lines still falter on
as infrastructure strategy for low-sulphur laws
55 CN locomotive engineers in Canada ratify new contract 68 Hapag-Lloyd stays bullish despite loss in first quarter
56 CP announces plans for half billion dollar investment in
69 Maersk sets course for cost-cutting programme after
future of grain supply chain with railcar order
unveiling first-quarter loss
57 CP and IBEW reach a tentative three-year agreement;
TCRC-T&E and CP reach tentative, four-year agreement
69 No free pass for shippers
58 Océan signed a 10-year contract with Port of Kingston, 70 MSC tries ‘last-resort’ emergency surcharge to offset
Jamaica, for harbour towage services rising cost of fuel
58 International delegation on city-port relations in Trois- 71 HMM targets 1 million TEUs
Rivières 71 Seafood the dish of the day as Canadian perishables
59 Port of Johnstown continues to expand, win new exports drive airfreight growth
business 72 Box terminals fare better financially than their carrier
60 Two institutional fund managers to join Ontario customers, but can it last?
Teachers’ as equity partners in GCT Global Container 73 Automated invoice and payment systems in shipping
Terminals Inc. could wipe out billions of extra costs
60 Grain exports to mitigate a slow start at the Seaway 73 Asian ports under pressure
61 U.S. Coast Guard sets pilotage rates for 2018 74 The big bird Antonov-225 flies into Leipzig
61 Rand Logistics vessels receive AMVER awards for the
2017 sailing season
62 Prince Rupert appoints Shaun Stevenson as CEO REGULAR FEATURES
62 Next phase of Prince Rupert Fairview Terminal 75 Upcoming Industry Events
expansion unveiled 75 Index of Advertisers
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June 25, 2018 • Canadian Sailings • 5
GET THE EDUCATION that 260+ Canadian logistics employers prefer on your resume Enroll in CIFFA’s online courses in international freight forwarding today! These courses are certified*, flexible, and focused on the competencies and skills, that 260+ CIFFA member companies are looking for in an employee. Achieve the CIFFA Certificate in as little as 2 months. Then complete your Advanced Certificate, and work toward a designation as a Professional Freight Forwarder (PFF). Visit www.ciffa.com for information on all of our educational offerings, and designations. *International Freight Forwarding Courses are certified by FIATA and the Canadian Supply Chain Sector Council.
CIFFA 70th Anniversary
Freight forwarders gather for once-in-a-lifetime event
BY KEITH NORBURY
Tropical Shipping recently moved
its Canadian operations to
Halifax’s Halterm terminal.
Canadian International Freight Self; and closing speaker Dr. Nick
Forwarders Association will cele- Bontis, a McMasters University pro-
brate its 70th anniversary in style fessor and the Director of the Insti-
with a full-fledged conference in tute for Intellectual Capital Research.
Toronto this October. The theme of
the gathering, which takes place 450 ATTENDEES EXPECTED
Oct. 16 and 17 at the Metro Toronto
Convention Centre, is Global Supply Ms. Snowden expects the confer-
Chains in a Digital Future: innovation ence to attract about 450 attendees.
and inspiration. “It’s very much deal- Each of them will also receive access
ing about e-commerce, last-mile de- to two trade shows — Multimodal
liveries, drones, automated vehicles, Americas 2018 and TIACA’s Air
transparency, freight forwarders’ sys- Cargo Forum and Exhibition 2018 —
tems, and how do you provide visi- also happening at the convention
bility to your customers,” said Ruth centre.
Snowden, CIFFA’s Executive Direc- “I’m excited about it,” said
tor. Stephen McDermott, CIFFA’s Direc-
The conference will feature about tor of Education and Marketing, who
35 speakers. They include Craig is helping with sponsorships, ticket
Fuller, Managing Director of the sales and setting up CIFFA’s trade-
Blockchain in Transport Alliance; show pavilion. “It’s a once-in-a-life-
Nora Young, host of CBC Radio’s time type of event that we’re putting RUTH SNOWDEN
Spark and the author of The Virtual on. We’re pulling out all the stops for
June 25, 2018 • Canadian Sailings • 7
Global Headquarters
Chicago, IL
San Diego, Los Angeles
Miami, Atlanta, Kansas City The Hardest Working Team in Transport
Oakbrook, New York
Newark, Philadelphia
Global Speed & Precision
Raleigh/Durham
Seattle, Hawaii
Canadian Headquarters
Montreal, QC
Toronto, Vancouver
Ottawa, Calgary
Halifax, Brossard
Drummondville
Asia Headquarters
Shanghai, China
Hong Kong, Shenzhen
Qingdao
Mexico City, Guadalajara
Guam, Puerto-Rico
Get the Team Behind You
8 • Canadian Sailings • June 25, 2018
CIFFA 70th Anniversary
“They have subcontracted space
underneath in the convention area
for us to host our conference,” Ms.
Snowdon said. “So our conference is
self-enclosed. It’s our speakers. It’s
our delegates. They’re going to wear
our lanyards. We have our own spon-
sors. But all of 450 delegates will be
coming upstairs onto the trade-show
floor for our evening reception, for
example, on Day 1, and for a net-
working break on Day 2.”
JOINT PLENARY PANEL
The evening before the confer-
ence, CIFFA hosts an invitation-only
reception and dinner for directors,
sponsors, and speakers.
The conference opens with a joint
plenary panel session co-hosted with
it. We’re making sure that we’ve got the two trade shows. Titled “Digital
great sponsorship, great support, Transformation — Brave New World
and a really amazing group of peo- “It’s very much dealing or New Normal?,” it goes from 9:30
ple working towards putting on what about e-commerce, to 11 a.m. on Tuesday. Panelists in-
I think would be the industry’s show- clude Dheeraj Kohli of Unisys, Robert
case platform.” last-mile deliveries, Bigler of eBay Canada, and Yuree
The conference is the first of its drones, automated Hong, founder of S/HE Blockchain-
kind that CIFFA itself has organized. vehicles, transparency, ers.
The association celebrated its 65th freight forwarders’ The CIFFA conference itself has its
anniversary in 2013 at the Roads, grand opening at 11:30 a.m. with an
Rails and Runways conference in Ed- systems, and how do you executive update and fireside chat
monton. But that event was organ- provide visibility to your featuring a panel of industry leaders
ized by Edmonton International customers.” such as Philip Pouildis of BlackBerry
Airport. Just shy of 300 people at- Radar, Jonathan Wahba of Canadian
tended. — Ruth Snowden, Pacific Railway, and Grace Liang,
President of OOCL Canada Inc. Dur-
“We do not do annual confer- CIFFA’s Executive Director
ences,” Ms. Snowden said. “We ing the CIFFA luncheon on Tuesday,
Oct. 16, CBC’s Nora Young will de-
don’t do regional conferences. We
liver her keynote speech on the topic
don’t do local conferences. We’re
of “Seeing the Forest and the Trees:
the only association in the world, I larger companies sending as many
Surviving and Thriving in the Coming
think, that does not do confer- as four or five. Some non-members
Data Boom.”
ences.” are also expected “because our con-
CIFFA does hold an annual gen- tent is really good,” Ms. Snowden
said. “But it’s being designed for BLOCKCHAIN DISCUSSED
eral meeting and three gala dinners
freight forwarding companies or for At 2:20 p.m. on Tuesday, another
and golf tournaments each year — in
third-party logistics providers.” panel convenes on the theme of
Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
The AGM usually attracts about 50 While CIFFA hosts its conference emerging and “disruptive” tech-
attendees. downstairs at the convention centre, nologies such as blockchain. Among
about 4,000 people will gather up- the panelists will be Toronto lawyer
TRADE SHOWS UPSTAIRS stairs at the two trade shows, which Rui Fernandes, who specializes in
continue for an extra day, until Oct. transportation and insurance issues.
For the Toronto conference, Ms. 18. CIFFA will have an 800 square “I intend to talk in my slot about the
Snowden expects each of the 260 foot pavilion between the two shows, legal issues that arise from the use of
member freight forwarding compa- which CIFFA delegates can access by blockchain,” Mr. Fernandes told
nies and 160 associate members to wearing the lanyards they will receive Canadian Sailings. “Because it’s a
send at least one delegate, with with their conference registration. distributed ledger, a distributed net-
June 25, 2018 • Canadian Sailings • 9
CIFFA 70th Anniversary
work, who do you sue if something goes wrong?” He will
also examine what happens if a blockchain is hacked,
which courts would have jurisdiction over it, and “how
some of legal issues may become absolute obstacles to
it being implemented.” Mr. Fernandes said his presen-
tation will also touch on artificial intelligence and how it
might be used in combination with blockchain and what
legal issues might arise from that. The best known ap-
plications of blockchain are bitcoin and other cryptocur-
rencies.
Also on the panel will be Craig Fuller, Managing Di-
rector of the Blockchain in Transport Alliance. According
to its website, the alliance has a membership that in-
cludes such transportation heavyweights as Panalpina,
Navistar, J.B. Hunt, FedEx, Irving Transportation and Lo-
gistics, UPS, BNSF Railway, and UberFreight.
POTENTIAL FOR HACKING
The chains of bitcoin have become so long that
they’re now almost impervious to hacking, although there
have been reports of bitcoin having been hacked. Mr.
Fernandes doubts the veracity of those reports, noting
that a hacker would have to compromise about half the
servers involved. Bitcoin now uses such massive numbers
of servers that it would likely take a supercomputer under
the control of a government to hack it, he said.
HEATHER
DEVINE
To replace surface transportation with
air transportation might be very no, those documents don’t represent what actually hap-
pened?”
economical and feasible.”
— Heather Devine POTENTIAL BENEFITS
A blockchain would incorporate electronic bills of lad-
ing, which already exist, as well as insurance policies and
This January, shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk an- notices of any damage claims. “If during the transport,
nounced a joint venture with IBM to develop blockchain one of the documents shows the discrepancy of carriage,
applications for global trade. And in May, it revealed it then it would provide automatic notices to insurers and
was using Insurwave, a blockchain platform for marine designated investigators and surveyors,” he said, “So it
insurance, according to reports in the trade press. Mr. just saves on people time.”
Fernandes said that, initially at least, such blockchains By adding in artificial intelligence, all of that can be
would have few customers. Even 2,000 customers would
monitored by a computer program, “which brings all sorts
require a small blockchain platform, he said. “So in that
of other interesting things in,” Mr. Fernandes said.
case, that might be easier to hack into,” Mr. Fernandes
said. For example, it would conceivably coordinate the dif-
ferent electronic platforms in an organization into one,
He suspects that, initially, blockchains will represent
an expense to corporations. However, eventually cost- which would be accessible by insurers, shippers, trucking
savings will occur because blockchains will avoid the companies, and others. “So everybody knows exactly
need to produce physical documentation at every inter- where the goods are at every minute,” Mr. Fernandes
change of cargo shipments. “The people using the said. That would also mean needing fewer people in the
blockchain would have to agree that the documents are process.
the documents,” Mr. Fernandes said. “So one of the is- “It might remove a lot of intermediaries,” he said.
sues I’m going to talk about is: can you then argue that, “Right now in transportation, you might have a freight for-
10 • Canadian Sailings • June 25, 2018CIFFA 70th Anniversary
warder who interacts between the carry cargo in 40-foot containers to
shipper and the carrier in arranging drone airports where surface trans-
the carriage. Well, with blockchain portation takes care of the last-mile
you could theoretically get rid of delivery. “To replace surface trans-
that.” portation with air transportation
might be very economical and fea-
DRONES DISCUSSION sible,” Ms. Devine said. “That is
what I would see for drones to be-
Highlights of Day 2 include a come more of a disruptive technol-
breakout panel session on drones, at ogy, rather than seeing them as
9 a.m., and a closing plenary with a fleets for delivering beer.”
keynote address by Dr. Bontis, at
3:15 p.m. Panelists on the drone ses- While drones have the potential
sion include Heather Devine, a to eliminate some jobs in the supply
Hamilton, Ont. transportation lawyer. chain, Ms. Devine doubts they will
“I think that drones are actually put brokers or freight forwarders out
going to be a tool of the future,” Ms. of business. That’s because shippers
Devine told Canadian Sailings. will still need someone to help them
“When I first started talking about move their goods. “What I really ex-
drones, even two, three years ago, NICK pect at the CIFFA conference, par-
people were amazed by them.” BONTIS ticularly with its focus on looking at
new technologies, is we’re going to
One amazing way drones are al-
be looking at ways that freight for-
ready used is to pick products in
warders and brokers can extend
warehouses. “It’s an excellent tool “Information their areas of business to take ad-
where you can replace a person in a
very economical sense and not only bombardment is this idea vantage of technology,” Ms. Devine
that we’re basically getting said.
is it economical, but you can expand
the horizon using a fairly simple and bombarded and hosed DIGITAL DISRUPTION
safe technology,” she said.
with two much data and
Where she doesn’t expect to see The last words of wisdom at the
drones, though, is whirring through
information – email, conference are scheduled to come
her residential neighbourhood to de- tweets, messages, text from intellectual capital expert Dr.
liver packages as Amazon has pro- messages.” Nick Bontis, a professor of strategic
posed. Instead, she envisions an management McMaster University’s
aerial highway where massive drones — Dr. Nick Bontis DeGroote School of Business in
June 25, 2018 • Canadian Sailings • 11CIFFA 70th Anniversary
Hamilton. Among the bullet points he’ll cover are how to talk a lot about those types of examples of how this new
cope with digital disruption, better manage change, im- world of information bombardment is not the traditional
prove productivity and efficiency, and speed up innova- world of people coming after you,” Mr. Bontis said. “It’s
tion through collaboration. In discussing digital about these inanimate objects.”
disruption, he’ll touch on two areas: information bom-
bardment, and disruptive technologies.
“Information bombardment is this idea that we’re ba- LEARNING AND UNLEARNING
sically getting bombarded and hosed with two much data He will also touch on drone technology, such as how
and information — email, tweets, messages, text mes- it can be used to scan the roof of your house for damage
sages,” said Dr. Bontis, who authored a 2011 book titled to shingles and tiles before they lead to costly leaks.
Information Bombardment: Rising Above the Digital On- “And I’ll be using those types of examples to talk about
slaught. To deal with that, he offers such prescriptions as this idea of how inanimate objects with the use of sen-
using advanced email features to create folders for as- sors, nanosensors, RFID technology, and GPS technology
signed projects or creating simple code words to identify — that are all IT enabled — can meet up to make your
projects in email subject lines. job significantly easier and definitely less expensive in the
“Generally speaking the average person in Canada re- long run.”
ceives 84 emails per day,” Dr. Bontis said. “And out of Under the bullet point of managing change, he’ll focus
those 84, only eight, or 10 per cent, are critical for you on the tension between learning and unlearning. The lat-
and your stakeholders in terms of making an impact on ter refers to a company recognizing a costly blunder and
the business.” deciding to state emphatically in its strategic plan that
On the technology side, he’ll point to famous disrup- it’s not going to repeat the mistake. “I think that’s a very,
tors in other industries — such Airbnb and Uber —and very important feature in your ability to manage change,”
ask, “What are some of the technological advances that he said. “You need to know specifically what you can and,
could impact transportation?” That might include RFID more importantly, what you cannot do.”
tags that are GPS-enabled on the cargo side, as well as Though Dr. Bontis admits that he has limited experi-
companies like Tesla that are pioneering autonomous ence in freight forwarding, he has spoken to other trans-
driving, he said. portation organizations, including a recent session for
He owns a Tesla vehicle and has experienced its dis- customs brokers and border officials. “But, full disclosure:
ruptive power in another way — through email alerts. But, I’m a strategy professor, and transportation is not my ex-
he says, “the real magic” of the Internet of Things will pertise,” he said. As the conference’s closing speaker,
come when the things communicate with each other, one of his roles is ensure all the attendees leave with
such as when his Samsung smart watch shares vital signs smiles on their faces and feeling a little more energetic
data with information that his Japanese-made Toto smart as they return to work. “That’s really the task that I hope
toilet collects about his digestive tract. “So I’m going to to achieve,” Dr. Bontis said.
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12 • Canadian Sailings • June 25, 2018CIFFA 70th Anniversary
Looking ahead to the freight forwarding of tomorrow
BY KEITH NORBURY
What does the future of freight forwarding look like in
Canada? Let’s ask recent winners of the Canadian Interna-
tional Freight Forwarders Association’s annual Young Inter-
national Freight Forwarder of the Year competition. The
2017 winner, Bradley Davis — who went on to win the
global YIFFY award — said he wishes he had a crystal ball.
Even without one, he said, “I definitely see a lot of the
trucking industry starting to move towards autonomous ve-
hicles.” He also envisions information technology plat-
forms enabling forwarders “to go after a lot of the
customers that are your onesie-twosies that can be worked
automatically through a system.” And he expects to see
more consolidation in the industry as large companies ac-
quire small and medium-sized forwarders.
PUSHING DATA ENTRY
Kendyl Baptiste, who won CIFFA’s YIFFY award in 2018,
has already seen quite a few changes since her first expo-
sure to the industry 13 years ago. “Before, there were a lot
of phonecall-based updates,” said Ms. Baptiste, who is
now an ocean import supervisor at the Bolloré Logistics’
Toronto office. “Now everyone’s really pushing data entry.”
That includes an online tracking system, and introduction
of the paperless eManifest system, although so far her
company is using the latter only for consolidations. “But
hopefully everyone gets on board and it starts working
more smoothly,” Mrs. Baptiste said. “It will definitely help
in terms of timely submissions and speeding things up just
in general.” She also anticipates that her customers, such Kendyl Baptiste receives the 2018 CIFFA Young
as those buying consumer goods, are going to want their International Freight Forwarder of the Year award
freight quotes immediately. “So, having that platform on- from CIFFA director Paul Glionna of Universal
line to get a quote right off the bat — if you don’t create a Logistics.
program like that, you’re going to be out of the market
soon,” Mrs. Baptiste said.
Like Mr. Davis, she also expects to see more industry
consolidation, as well as more one-stop shops, such as straints on the industry itself,” said Mr. Whitlock, 32, who
freight forwarders investing in trucking companies or is now head of ocean freight for Panalpina in Miami, Fla.
fourth-party logistics (4PL). (4PL occurs when a company “But at the same time it gives a lot of opportunity for up
hires a fourth specialist to coordinate the work of third- and coming people.”
party work it has already outsourced.) On the technology front, the industry isn’t as advanced
International trade agreements are also likely to have as it could be in such areas as tracking and tracing ship-
an impact on freight forwarding. “That’s definitely going ments, said Mr. Whitlock, who has been with Panalpina for
to change things because who knows what Trump is going eight years, including four years recently in Hamburg, Ger-
to do next,” she said. many.
“Interaction with the Internet is one part that I would
GENERATIONAL SHIFT say seems like it’s much more advanced but, overall, it’s
just not really where it should be as of yet,” Mr. Whitlock
Douglas Whitlock, who won CIFFA’s YIFFY award in
said. “They still need to have large stepping stones into
2014, said one of the biggest impacts he sees coming is
the imminent retirement of baby boomers from the pro- automation, into the way that data is processed, (and) the
fession. “As soon as people start retiring I think it’s going utilization of systems.”
to open a lot of major gaps, which is going to cause con- The uneven rollout of eManifest is “just another exam-
June 25, 2018 • Canadian Sailings • 1314 • Canadian Sailings • June 25, 2018
CIFFA 70th Anniversary
ple of how far behind the times we are when all you’re really
doing is passing information that should be processed
through a (computer) system anyway.”
Mr. Whitlock’s company at least is making strides toward
a paperless world. “It’s actually one of our initiatives as a
company to go as green as possible,” he said.
One technological area that Mr. Whitlock is skeptical
about is blockchain. “Unfortunately, I think it’s one of those
fads where every couple of years they come out with a new
idea where they think they’re going to change the world,”
Mr. Whitlock said, noting that freight forwarding has been
around for centuries.
ON TOP OF THE WORLD
In 2017, Mr. Davis not only won CIFFA’s YIFFY honors,
and the regional award for the Americans, he was also the
first CIFFA winner of the global YIFFY award since 2007.
As this article went to press, Mrs. Baptiste was still await-
ing word on how she had done in the regional competition.
A victory would grant her a shot at the world title, which
will be presented in Delhi, India, later this year. Mr. Whit- Douglas Whitlock was a finalist of the global Young
lock, meanwhile, won the Americas competition in 2014, International Freight Forwarder of the Year
which earned him a spot in the final four and a trip to Istan- competition in 2014.
bul for the final.
Mr. Davis collected his global YIFFY at the world con-
gress of FIATA — the International Federation of Freight
Forwarders Associations — in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in
October 2017. “It was pretty cool,” said Mr. Davis, 29, who “As soon as people start retiring I think
now works as a national trade lane special with Kuehne + it’s going to open a lot of major gaps,
Nagel in Toronto, having joined the company in July 2017. which is going to cause constraints on the
“The year and half before, it was every weekend, nights,
vacation time, and holidays I was spending in the office, ba- industry itself.”
sically writing and researching and going non-stop. So it
felt like it was something I had really earned.”
— Douglas Whitlock
The effort was worth it, though, said Mr. Davis, who
worked on his YIFFY entries while with his previous em- “It was an interesting exercise. I do not have a lot of ex-
ployer, Panalpina. He tries to promote the competition as perience with Russia,” Mr. Davis said, adding that the ex-
much as possible to other young people in the profession. perience gave him great respect for those who do project
Mr. Davis estimated that researching and writing the two cargo work. “It’s extremely difficult and if you mess up one
dissertations he submitted to the competitions took him a thing, you could screw up the entire project,” he said. As
few hundred hours for each one. One reason he could find with most of the scenarios that Canadian competitors have
the time to work on his dissertations was that he doesn’t had to solve in recent years, that one was the brain child of
have children, he said. His girlfriend, Cindy Dasrat, also transportation consultant Fred Grootarz, President of Acro
works in the industry, with Expeditors International. “She Navigation Inc. Mr. Grootarz said he bases the scenarios
understands, especially when you’re dealing with imports largely on his personal experiences and shapes them to fit
from the Asia-Pacific, your job never really ends,” Mr. Davis FIATA’s rules. “I give them leads to get to certain things and
said. all that and then they’ve got to go to work and figure it all
out,” said Mr. Grootarz, who also judges the CIFFA part of
FROM EDMONTON TO RUSSIA the competition.
His first dissertation plotted how to transport 20 trolley The Canadian winner receives a $1,500 cash prize. Win-
buses from Edmonton to Samara, a Russian city about ners of the regional Americas competition receive free reg-
1,000 kilometres east of Moscow. His report covered such istration and accommodation to the FIATA world congress
details as trucking the trolleys, how to load them onto a plus US$1,000 toward their airfare. Aside from the cash re-
ship, clearing export and import customs, and the type of wards, Mr. Grootarz noted, the winners have all received
equipment needed for the inland move in Russia. “interesting job advancements because of it.”
June 25, 2018 • Canadian Sailings • 15CIFFA 70th Anniversary
win. “I wanted it to be the hardest possible thing that I
thought I’d be able to get through,” Mr. Davis explained.
DRIVER SHORTAGE NOTED
As for the threat that autonomous vehicles might pose
for truck-driving jobs, Mr. Davis noted that the more press-
ing problem at present is a shortage of drivers.
“How many people do you know right now that are
growing up saying, ‘I want to be a driver or I want to be a
long haul trucker?’” Mr. Davis said. “There’s no appeal in it
when you can make more money working in a warehouse
than driving seven, eight hours a day through traffic, haul-
ing huge loads. It’s a tough industry.”
At the same time, Mr. Davis anticipates a huge informa-
tion technology industry developing to manage au-
tonomous fleets. “The jobs don’t disappear. They just
migrate to a new place,” he said. That would include Uber-
like services for trucking. “But the issue with that is you’re
lacking a lot of the knowledge that comes through the in-
dustry,” Mr. Davis said. “You can make a system look great
and as long as everything’s going hunky dory, that’s perfect.
But as soon as you have a port strike, you’re back to a man-
ual process.”
“I definitely see a lot of the trucking
industry starting to move towards
autonomous vehicles.”
Bradley Davis won the global Young International
Freight Forwarder of the Year competition in 2017. — Bradley Davis
ICE ROAD TRUCKING As for his own future, he would like to live and work in
Asia for about five years.
For his second dissertation, Mr. Davis envisioned trans-
porting a gargantuan Komatsu dump truck from Japan to “One of the great things about this company is they’ve
Rio Tinto’s Diavik diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Ter- got a ton of succession planning in place and have no
ritories. That move entailed dismantling of the Komatsu, problems letting people experience the world and trying
trucking it to Ibaraki port, then barging it to a nearby air- out different areas of the company,” Mr. Davis said.
port where it was loaded into an Antonov cargo plane. Born in Newmarket, Ont., to Canadian parents, Mr.
From there, the cargo flew to Edmonton where it was Davis grew up in Atlanta, Ga. After three years of study at
trucked to the mine, with the last legs of the journey over Southern Polytechnic State University, he decided he
ice roads. To assist with the plans, Mr. Davis contacted needed a change and hopped on a plane back to his na-
companies that specialize in Arctic trucking, including Nor- tive country.
Ex Engineering Ltd. and Tli Cho Landtran Transport Ltd. “So it’s home for right now and then I hope that the next
The latter’s drivers often appear on the History Channel se- place I go to, I can make it feel like home as well,” Mr.
ries Ice Road Truckers. “I just kind of kept bugging every- Davis said.
body,” Mr. Davis said. “And they just thought, ‘Oh crap,
this guy’s not going away,’ I guess.” NUCLEAR OPTION
The project move was unlike anything he did in his day-
Mrs. Baptiste also competed for the 2017 CIFFA prize.
to-day work, which primarily involved transporting retail
She was disappointed at her result but tried again the next
goods in shipping containers. But he knew a dissertation
year. (Mr. Grootarz said he encouraged both her and Mr.
about importing a container of garments from Bangladesh
Davis to try again after their unsuccessful initial attempts.)
wasn’t going to win the competition. Besides, he had com-
The scenario for the 2018 CIFFA competition was to move
peted for the Canadian title the previous year and didn’t
16 • Canadian Sailings • June 25, 2018CIFFA 70th Anniversary
the stator of a nuclear power plant from Poland to Trever- of the deliveries, some of their shipments, and processing
ton, Ont. Mr. Grootarz said he devised the scenario based the paperwork. It just kind of kept going from there.”
on a real-life, but not identical move.
Her dissertation for the regional competition involved MENTORING HER ELDERS
exporting humanitarian relief aid to the Central African Re- Her original goal was to be a teacher, which led her to
public, a country she knew nothing about. “It was very in- study physical and health education at the University of
teresting because there’s a lot of armed conflict going on.” Toronto. About half way through, she dropped her educa-
Mrs. Baptiste said. “Trying to transport into that kind of sit- tional aspirations. And when she graduated in 2012, she
uation is very difficult.” had a lot of bills to pay, so decided to work full-time at
For each of the papers — which combined total about Shipco, where she had continued to work part-time and
60 pages, including photos, graphs, and maps — she during vacations while at university. “And since then I just
worked for at least a month and a half, in her spare time. kind of went with the flow, and stayed in the industry,” Ms.
“For the week leading up, as I was putting everything to- Baptiste said.
gether and finalizing everything, I wasn’t really getting a lot After two years full-time with Shipco, in 2014 the flow
of sleep,” she said. took her to SDV Logistics, which is now called Bolloré Lo-
Mrs. Baptiste started in the freight forwarding business gistics. Headquartered in France, Bolloré has offices in 106
while still in high school, working part-time at Shipco Trans- countries with 20,200 employees.
port, where her mom, Karen Valenta, worked. Mrs. Baptiste works out of the Toronto office in Missis-
“I started off really just doing filing for them,” Mrs. Bap- sauga. Since April 2018, she has been an ocean import su-
tise said. “Eventually I would ask questions. I wanted to pervisor, with five full-time employees and one-part-timer
learn more so I would start doing some of the manifests for working under her purview. With the exception of the part-
them, just submit customs paperwork. I got more and more timer, all of them are older than Mrs. Baptiste, who is 27.
involved and then I progressed to actually handling some “It’s an adjustment, definitely,” she said. “I don’t even know
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June 25, 2018 • Canadian Sailings • 17CIFFA 70th Anniversary
how to describe it. They’ve all been in the industry a lot of a tsunami.
longer than I have.” While his entries didn’t win him the world title, they did
As a millennial, though, she grew up with the Internet earn him a trip to Istanbul for the FIATA World Congress,
and learned about computer applications in school where he rubbed shoulders with industry leaders from
“whereas this is something they would have had to learn around the world. “I think I got over 200 business cards at
on the job.” As a consequence, she gets to put the teach- that point — people congratulating you, saying ‘Hey, we’d
ing skills she learned at university to work — although it’s like to work with you,’” Mr. Whitlock said.
more like adult education. “That’s actually one of the as-
pects I do like about being in this position is teaching,” she THE SHINING MOMENT
said.
The exposure from his YIFFY efforts also helped advance
his career. “Probably the shining moment was where I was
MOVING AN AVRO ARROW?
able to get recognition within the company itself,” Mr.
Mr. Whitlock said he entered the YIFFY competition at Whitlock said. And that, he added, enabled him to move
the urging of colleague Kal Petrov, who represented the into new roles within the organization.
Americas region at the 2013 competition in Singapore. At Freight forwarding wasn’t his initial career choice,
the time, Petrov was also employed with Panalpina. He has though. He studied graphic design at Mohawk College, but
since moved to join 2017 YIFFY winner Brad Davis at he graduated during a recession when “people just weren’t
Kuehne+Nagel. “When I first heard of Kal doing it, I was hiring graphic designers.” So he ended up working for
not too eager myself to take on extracurricular activities. Canada Cartage, which was where his father was working
But I saw the success that he had, and that kind of trickled at the time. Then he dated a woman whose father owned
down to Bradley, who just won recently as well,” Mr. Whit- a small freight forwarding company, Zircon Logistics. The
lock, noting that the three are good friends. young love didn’t last, but his relationship with the industry
For his initial dissertation, Mr. Whitlock had to plan the blossomed, resulting in him joining Panalpina in August
move of a replica of Canada’s historic Avro Arrow fighter 2010. After about four years as a regional, then global key
jet from a Toronto museum that was closing to a museum account manager in Germany, he recently moved to Miami
in Manheim, Germany. “So I had to do the whole process where he now supervises a team of eleven, most of them
of how the move would be made, the packaging, (and) older than he is.
when it got into Germany, what road constraints there were. Dealing with the generational diversity is comparable to
Would it move on the road? Would it move on a barge? dealing with people of different cultural backgrounds —
And stuff like that,” Mr. Whitlock said. “It was an interesting something he is used to doing as a Canadian, he said.
overall experience.” “We’re very personable,” Mr. Whitlock said. “We’re also re-
For his second dissertation, Mr. Whitlock had to plan latable but we’re also very sensitive and sympathetic to oth-
the movement of relief aid to the Philippines in the wake ers as well.”
18 • Canadian Sailings • June 25, 2018CIFFA 70th Anniversary
Women winning recognition for freight forwarding
prowess
BY KEITH NORBURY fully engaged and automated with
the Canadian Border Services
Agency’s eManifest system.
ANTICIPATED IMPACTS
On the horizon is the anticipated
introduction of blockchain technol-
ogy, which Ms. Gallacher has been
reading up on. “It’s not a simple thing
and not to be taken lightly,” Ms. Gal-
lacher said. Based on her research to
date, Ms. Gallacher said blockchain
“has the potential to greatly increase
transaction efficiencies between inter-
national parties.” However, she said,
it’s too early to know what benefits
and risks the technology poses for her
industry. “The key is balancing the
benefit and the risk and finding out
what works,” Ms. Gallacher said.
Lucia Pinheiro, President of Damco Canada, receives the 2018 Donna “Maybe what works for one company
Letterio Leadership Award from Nicholas Letterio (right) and CIFFA doesn’t work for another. Or there
President Gary Vince (left). could be an industry standard that’s
formed. I think it’s really too early in
the conversation to be speculating.”
“Technology” is the best word to AWARD HONOURS FEMALE
Also expected to have an impact
describe how freight forwarding has LEADERS on the industry in the not-so-distant
changed over the years, says Kim future are autonomous vehicles, the
In recognition of her role as a fe-
Gallacher, ocean freight manager for expanded reach of Amazon, and the
male leader in the industry, Ms. Gal-
Montréal-based Delmar International lacher received CIFFA’s inaugural potential for Uber- or Airbnb-type dis-
Inc. “When I started, there was no In- Donna Letterio Leadership Award in ruptions. Ms. Gallacher expresses
ternet,” said Ms. Gallacher who has 2015. The award is named for CIFFA’s confidence that those upstarts won’t
been in the business for over a quar- first and still only female President, make freight forwarding obsolete,
ter century, the last eight years with who died from bladder cancer in however. “I have a biased opinion,
Delmar. “We typed bills of lading or 2013 near the end of her two-year and I think that our group of freight
manifests by hand on typewriters with term. Ms. Gallacher described win- forwarders is highly professional and
carbon paper. If you made a mistake ning the award as a “career-making highly knowledgeable and highly con-
at the last minute, you’d have to do it moment.” She is also proud to have nected globally,” Ms. Gallacher said.
all over again.” known Ms. Letterio from having met “So, again, my biased opinion is I
her at industry functions and training would find it hard to believe that
She would look forward to the ar- somebody could just jump in here
sessions over the years. “She was a
rival of Canadian Sailings magazine and do that.”
mentor,” Ms. Gallacher said, noting
on her desk because it was then the
that Ms. Letterio rose from the ranks
only way to check the shipping of the industry to become CEO of DIFFERENT APPROACHES
schedules. “There were no online DHL Global Forwarding (Canada) Inc.
schedules,” Ms. Gallacher said. What she does anticipate is for
“Like all of us, she learned through more young people and women to
Making an overseas phone call CIFFA courses and working in the jump into the profession. As someone
was also much more difficult than it is business, in the trenches,” Ms. Gal- who supervises a team of more than
today, and “Telex machines were one lacher said. a dozen workers of various ages, she
of our main sources of communica- Fast forward to 2018, and “Delmar said “it’s all true” that millennials and
tion with our overseas offices,” Ms. is on the forefront of going paper- baby boomers require different ap-
Gallacher said. less,” she said. That includes being proaches in the workplace. The in-
June 25, 2018 • Canadian Sailings • 19CIFFA 70th Anniversary
Damco Canada since April 2013. This family’s janitorial business in London,
February she added “area CEO for Ont., when Maersk recruited her. “I’m
the U.S. West Coast” to her title. In super super happy that I chose trans-
Canada, she oversees about 60 em- portation. It’s taken me all over the
ployees at Damco’s freight forward- world,” said Ms. Pinheiro, whose fa-
ing, logistics and customs operations. milial roots are on the Azores Island
Including its distribution division, of Faial and who is fluent in Por-
Damco has 150 employees across tuguese, Spanish, Danish, French,
Canada. Internationally, the company and English.
employs more than 10,000 people in
more than 100 countries. Damco is Looking ahead, she predicts mas-
part of A.P. Moller – Maersk. sive disruptions coming in her indus-
try. “And it’s not from who you would
It was with Maersk Sealand traditionally say would be a competi-
Canada that Ms. Pinheiro got her start tor,” Ms. Pinheiro said. “It’s technol-
in the business as an account coordi-
ogy companies. It’s data. It’s big data.
nator. Then her career took her to ex-
It’s blockchain. Since the beginning
otic locales such as Singapore and
of time, our industry has been one
Dubai, where she discovered that
that’s extremely fragmented, ex-
women lead many of the manage-
tremely manual, paper-based, (and)
ment teams.
very, very traditional when it comes
Kim Gallacher to the various steps and parties in-
volved in international freight and in-
ternational logistics.” She cited the
creasing numbers of women, mean- example of eManifest, which the
while, “is a wonderful thing,” she Canada Border Services Agency has
“Blockchain has the been working to roll out since before
said. “Twenty years ago in the indus-
try, women were far outnumbered by potential to greatly her return to Canada “and we still
men, and that’s just not the case increase transaction don’t have it off the ground,” she
today,” she said. Looking ahead, Ms. said.
efficiencies between
Gallacher expects to see even more
women in her profession. Ideally, she international parties.” 99.99 PER CENT PAPERLESS
would like those numbers to reflect
the general population. “For exam- — Kim Gallacher Her company, however, has made
eManifest a priority and is now
ple, if women are 55 per cent in the
“99.99 per cent” of the way to being
world there should be 55 per cent
paperless. “I feel pretty good that
women in your company,” Ms. Gal-
lacher said. our team has delivered all the mile-
stones that we need to deliver,” Ms.
She would also like to serve on “Coming back to Canada, I be- Pinheiro said. “But we’re also at the
CIFFA’s Board one day. She already came very aware of the fact that I was mercy of the Canadian government.”
contributes to the association’s advo- in the minority,” she said, although
cacy efforts by serving on its National she has already noticed improve- When it comes to blockchain,
Seafreight Committee and on the ments in the number of women in the Damco’s parent company is at the
CBSA’s Working Group Subcommit- industry. Ms. Pinheiro has also hap- forefront, having recently forged a
tee. pily noticed improvements in formal joint venture with IBM. Ms. Pinheiro
education in the industry. “Twenty wasn’t at liberty to discuss the time-
BACK IN CANADA years ago when I came out of school, line for blockchain’s implementation,
there were no programs for logistics though. “But I can tell you that we’re
The most recent winner of the or international transportation,” she very excited about it.” Among the
Donna Letterio Leadership Award, said. exciting promises of blockchain is
Lucia Pinheiro, said she was “hon- that it will enable seamless tracking
oured and humbled” to receive the of cargo shipments. “You will be able
HAPPY CAREER CHOICE
award this April. When Ms. Pinheiro to track immediately where a con-
returned to Canada in 2013 after Ms. Pinheiro graduated with a tainer is in the process, and what
about 15 years abroad, she heard a business degree from the University documentation is linked to it,” Ms.
lot about Ms. Letterio’s contributions of Western Ontario in 1997, with an Pinheiro explained. “You won’t have
to the industry. Ms. Pinheiro has been eye toward a banking career. At the to send 80 emails to 100 different
country manager and President of time, she was also working with her parties to track it down.”
20 • Canadian Sailings • June 25, 2018CIFFA 70th Anniversary
CIFFA expands education offerings, including further
forays into online realms
BY KEITH NORBURY
Students from Toronto’s Centennial College, a CIFFA educational partner,
attend a lecture in the supply chain and logistics program.
About 3,000 learners now enroll sociation six years ago. The objective
annually in educational programs of- is to sign two new valid educational
fered by Canadian International partners a year, he said. “Our goal
Freight Forwarders Association, says within the colleges is to have our pro-
Stephen McDermott, CIFFA’s Director grams integrated with a lot of college
of Education and Marketing. About programs so that when our members
half of those are through partner ed- are hiring graduates, they know that
ucational institutions and about half they are also hiring graduates that
through CIFFA directly. The latter are have the CIFFA certificate,” Mr. Mc-
now conducted entirely online. Dermott said.
“We don’t just eliminate the paper-
based or classroom-based training for LANGARA OFFERS CIFFA
the sake of it,” Mr. McDermott said. TRAINING
“We really do analyze what makes One of CIFFA’s newer educational
sense for the learner and how they partners is Langara College in Van-
can learn best. And we still do offer couver, B.C. Graduates of Langara’s
certain courses in class.” Supply Chain and Logistics Post-De-
CIFFA courses are now on the cal- gree Diploma receive a certificate
endars of about a dozen colleges from CIFFA if they meet the require-
across Canada, about twice as many ments of two associated courses — STEPHEN McDERMOTT
as when Mr. McDermott joined the as- Essentials of Freight Forwarding, and
June 25, 2018 • Canadian Sailings • 21CIFFA 70th Anniversary
also covers exam fees but not text- which provide the eight- to 10-week
books. practicum placements for the stu-
The program has two intakes per dents. The college is looking for new
year, with admission for this Septem- work-placement partners in Metro
ber already fully booked. Admissions Vancouver for the next practicum ses-
for January 2019 are now open. “The sions in September. Ms. To invites in-
number of open spots depends on our terested organizations to contact the
admission review process that is un- college.
derway,” Ms. To said.
JOB OPPORTUNITIES PLENTIFUL
Admission requirements include a
three- or four-years bachelor’s degree “Supply chain jobs are always plen-
or equivalent, as well as demonstrated tiful, it seems, especially in entry-level
proficiency in English. positions,” Mr. Dermott said. He
noted that CIFFA has 260 member
EXPERIENCED INSTRUCTOR companies in the industry. Including
non-CIFFA members, the freight for-
Jie (Jackie) Li, a member of Lan-
warding industry employs 30,000 to
gara’s continuing studies faculty and a
40,000, he estimates. CIFFA also has
program head at B.C. Institute of
a new jobs link called CareerConnect
Technology, is the lead instructor for
on its website.
the CIFFA courses. A certified CIFFA
instructor, Mr. Li has more than a “If you Google ‘supply chain jobs’
decade of experience in international or ‘freight forwarding jobs,’ it’s pages
business and logistics in transporta- and pages of jobs,” Mr. McDermott
Jie (Jackie) Li is the lead said. “So there are lots of opportuni-
tion. He currently serves on the Pacific
instructor for Langara’s chapter Board of Chartered Institute of ties.”
CIFFA courses. Logistics and Transport International, CIFFA’s other educational partners
and with the Vancouver area council of include George Brown College,
International Transportation and the Canadian Institute of Traffic and
Trade — and successfully challenge Seneca College, triOS College, East-
Transportation. ern College, Brighton College, St.
the CIFFA exams, said the college’s
Phuoi-Linh To. “The program has been very well Clair College, Eastern College, the
received by the industry,” Ms. To said, National Academy of Health and Busi-
“Students complete the exams as noting that the college has 15 industry ness, Universal Learning Institute, Cen-
part of the ITT and EFF courses, partners, including CIFFA members, tennial College, and Discovery
which are taken within the program,”
said Ms. To, who is a program man-
ager of accounting, business and
computer technology in the Continu- Phuoi-Linh To of
ing Studies department. The pro- Vancouver’s Langara
gram, which is full-time over two College says its CIFFA
years and encompasses six semes- certificate courses have
ters, had its first intake in May 2016; been well-received
and it first offered the CIFFA courses
by industry.
in May 2017. “We’ve had three co-
horts completing their CIFFA certifi-
cation courses, with over 40 students
having the opportunity to achieve
their certification,” Ms. To said.
The program accepts 25 to 30 stu-
dents per cohort, she said. Students
from the May 2016 intake graduated
this April. Four other cohorts, totalling
about 100 students, are in various
stages of the program, she said. Cost
for the entire diploma program,
which includes a work practicum, is
$13,000 for domestic students. That
22 • Canadian Sailings • June 25, 2018CIFFA 70th Anniversary
Community College. “It’s partnerships that we individually
sign with each college and they contribute to the employ-
ment of their students,” Mr. McDermott said. “And our
members will occasionally go to those colleges and hire
those students directly.”
The programs vary from college to college. Some offer
the certification as part of a diploma program in supply
chain and logistics. For example, Langara’s program is run
by Supply Chain Management B.C. “But they also gradu-
ate with a certificate from CIFFA because we have our own
standards of what constitutes a pass compared to what the
colleges might,” Mr. McDermott said.
TEXTBOOKS TURN ELECTRONIC
CIFFA is moving away from printed textbooks. The as-
sociation now uses an app called Texidium, which delivers
electronic textbooks to colleges in Canada and the U.S.
Texidium, from Ottawa-based Kivuto Solutions Inc., can be
installed on smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop
computers. “It’s a much easier way for us to distribute the
books and keep the books updated,” Mr. McDermott said.
“It even offers a lot of opportunities for instructors to create
groups within the app or give out additional details or an-
swer questions. And, for the student, it’s an entirely search-
able textbook. It also has text speech.” CIFFA found out
about Texidium from Sarnia, Ont.-based Lambton College, SANJAY DHEBAR
one of the association’s newest educational partners.
“They’ve just recently started their enrolment of students,”
Mr. McDermott said. non-member employees.
A requirement with all the colleges is that students must CIFFA’s ultimate educational goal is its Professional
write and pass CIFFA’s exams independently of the college Freight Forwarder designation, or PFF. To achieve the PFF
programs. “Our contracts and agreements with the col- requires first earning the CIFFA certificate. A second pre-
leges are all very detailed and checked by both parties so requisite is earning the advanced level certificate. The third
that we can ensure that the students get the fairest possible is completing the three courses of a CIFFA program de-
enrollment and they understand exactly what they have to signed by the Schulich Executive Education Centre of
do to secure the CIFFA certificate.” Toronto’s York University. “Then you need five years expe-
rience working with a freight forwarder, and that gives you
TWO TYPES OF ONLINE LEARNING the professional freight forwarder designation,” Mr. McDer-
mott explained.
For its own programs, CIFFA offers two types of online
courses — e-learning on demand, and virtual classrooms.
The former allows students to work at their own pace. “We SCHULICH COURSES NOW ONLINE
give each course about three months to finish but there are Courses in the Schulich program were originally deliv-
students that finish it in three weeks,” Mr. McDermott said. ered in the classroom. But it proved difficult for people to
The virtual classrooms are more scheduled and include take time off work to attend the class, Mr. McDermott said.
live weekly sessions in which the students hear the instruc- Moving it online has enabled students to take part in the
tor in real time. “The e-learning on demand gets all of the course in the evenings. They can also do it from anywhere
educational offerings that the virtual class gets,” Mr. Mc- in the country. “We found our enrollment has actually gone
Dermott said. “The only difference is one is live and one is up as a result,” Mr. McDermott said.
recorded.” Teaching two of the three Schulich courses is Sanjay
To earn what is informally known as the CIFFA certifi- Dhebar, an instructor at the Schulich School of Business
cate, a student must complete two introductory freight for- who developed the course materials, which CIFFA pur-
warding courses and the related exams. The fee for each chased. His courses are entitled Sales Strategies for the
of those courses — Essentials of Freight Forwarding, and Non-Sales Manager and Building a Strong Customer Serv-
International Transportation and Trade — is $525 plus tax ice Culture for Your Organization. I didn’t even know about
for employees of CIFFA members, and $690 plus tax for CIFFA until they approached us,” said Mr. Dhebar, who has
June 25, 2018 • Canadian Sailings • 23You can also read
