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Sean Patience

Managing Director,
Cargo Consolidators Agency

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How was your company started?

Cargo Consolidators Agency Ltd, was started in 1976 by Mr. Ronald Patience. CCA started off with providing freight forwarding services to local customers for air freight imports from Miami, Florida. This was quickly followed by ocean import services.

In the 1990s, CCA grew to provide air and ocean export services. CCA became recognised as an IATA cargo agency for air freight. In the ocean department, less than container load (LCL) services became a focal point, which has grown from 1 to 9 + regional and international destinations.

In the early 2000s, CCA continued to expand its offerings to include transhipment services, dangerous goods handling and training. In this decade, CCA also bought its Miami agent office, Fast Flow Inc, and also joined an international network of freight forwarders in order to extend its global reach.

From 2013, internal operations were switched from manual to digital with the installation of freight ERP system, bringing more accuracy and efficiency to the operation.

In the last 7 years CCA continued to grow and joined TRACE International in 2017 in response to become compliant with international standards. This was quickly followed in 2018 with STOW certification for HSSE processes.

In 2019, we made the decision to expand to Guyana and opened our own office (CCA Guyana Inc) in response to the oil boom.

CCA is now up to over 100 team members in 3 locations, Trinidad, Miami and Guyana. We provide a full range of air and ocean freight, import, export and transhipment services, complimented by value added services of customs brokerage, inland transport, marine cargo insurance, crating, dangerous goods handling, project cargo coordination, warehousing and 3PL services.

Where do you see the main areas of growth for your business and what are some of your current challenges?

Even though we already offer warehousing services, we have earmarked this area of operation for further expansion in the near future.

The main challenges affecting the shipping industry at this time (before covid-19) would be lack of availability of USD to transact business and also the inefficiencies associated with the customs and excise division in their outdated methods of operation.

How has COVID-19 affected the shipping industry and international trade?

The coronavirus has affected everyone worldwide, as keeping everyone healthy is the priority. As a result air freight has been significantly disrupted with airlines cutting flights dramatically. A significant portion of airfreight flies as belly cargo and this has caused almost all destinations to become inaccessible by this mode.

Thankfully, freighter aircraft are still flying and the shipping lines are still sailing although prices have been fluctuating weekly and sometimes daily as demand and supply has stagnated in certain industries and exploded in others.

Besides affecting the pricing it has also adversely affected schedules; some routes or lanes have been reduced in terms of frequency and transit times have increased due to delays at ports due to added controls.

So its not business as usual. We continue to adapt to the changing times to keep your cargo moving whist keeping our team safe.