OVRSEA regularly meets with shippers to discuss the latest freight and logistics news and future challenges. This week, we had a chat with Guillermo Becedoniz, International Sales and Marketing Manager of the Spanish industrial SME Valdinox.
Hello Guillermo, can you introduce yourself in a few words?
I have been working at Valdinox for almost 15 years. I currently act as International Sales and Marketing Manager. I had the chance to launch the company's international development strategy. But, Valdinox being a small company with about 30 employees, its executive body is quite small. We have the opportunity to be very much involved in all topics, which allows me to have a 360° vision of the company.
What does Valdinox do?
Valdinox is an industrial company specialising in producing a type of steel wire cable tray, based in Cantabria, in the north of Spain.
Our product brings a strong added-value thanks to a system licensed in 2012. This innovation allows us to access markets that we would normally not be able to address, such as the American market, due to the impact of transportation costs.
Who are your customers?
Our customers are mainly based in Europe and North America. We also have customers in Latin America (Costa Rica, Peru, and Mexico), but the pandemic has affected our activity in this region. The increase in freight rates and raw materials has forced us to stop exporting. On the other hand, our exports to North America have not suffered from these developments. Because these markets are less interventionists, price increases are immediately passed on to the end-users. We export about two containers to the American continent per week, while it used to be four containers before the pandemic. Our departure ports are Bilbao, Algeciras, Barcelona and Valencia, and we will probably operate from Santander soon. For Europe, we use road transport, with 4 to 5 trucks per week.
Does the current market downturn change your transportation strategy?
Not really: we transport very voluminous products, so it means that the transport options are limited. For example, we can only use 40-foot containers for sea transport. As for air freight, it was already too expensive before the pandemic. Since the price skyrocketed, even more, it's not an option. As for the impact on our business, the increase did slow down many companies. But globally, we've managed to adjust: our company has shown great agility.
How does the environmental challenge impact an industrial SME like yours, especially when it comes to logistics?
It's a very important topic for us! Like all companies today, we are committed to reducing our environmental and energy impact. Even before the pandemic, we made changes to our production system, and our licensed system promotes energy and resource savings, both in its production and installation. On the transportation side, we are very interested in these issues and are looking to adapt to reduce our environmental impact in all our business actions.
But let's face it, as a small company, we can't influence transport companies. However, we do pay close attention to companies showing sensitivity and commitment to these issues. In this sense, OVRSEA is the first company I have seen in the logistics sector to provide the customer with information on an accurate carbon footprint estimate for a given transport! Even if our customers do not yet see it as a determining factor for purchasing, as a shipper, it is now a key piece of information for us.
