It is one of the top 20 airlines in the world by size of fleet, with 272 planes, and lands 16 flights a week in Dubai with ongoing flights to Europe and Africa. But you will never be able to book a seat on it, and might never even notice its presence on the tarmac.
The “Browntail” fleet of the global logistics and delivery group UPS flies the global routes that are the arteries of its multibillion dollar business, along with sea and land lanes that all serve warehousing and logistics hubs in the world’s great commercial centres.
A few months back, Dubai was added to that category when UPS made the emirate one of its handful of global hubs, serving as a vital link in the chain of logistics centres that links Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
In charge of the project is Jim Barber, the president of international operations for UPS. “We’ve been in Dubai since 1995, but trade and growth patterns, and its position within the UPS network, meant it was time to significantly increase our presence here,” he says.
Mr Barber knows the global logistics business inside out. He has worked for the company for 29 years in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and is now based in Brussels, but calls home the US headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, where he began as a delivery driver.
United Parcel Service is more than 100 years old, but the pace of technological change has meant it – and other global groups like FedEx, DHL and the Middle East’s very own Aramex – have had to change strategy radically in the past two decades. Globalisation is a business reality for UPS, and for Mr Barber.
“We have had to think where we are on our international evolution, and on the global sectors that are the main parts of our business, like high-tech, health care, auto repair, aerospace parts and oil and gas service. These are the big ticket items that are expanding along with our logistics footprint,” he says.
And of course, the business has been changed dramatically by what he calls the “great vertical of life”, the shift to e-commerce and internet-originated business. “No industry in the world remains unaffected by it, and it really has thrown the challenge down to service providers, like UPS, to deliver it,” he says.
He describes the process that led to Dubai being marked as a global hub. “It’s a process of ticking boxes. Our chosen sectors are health care, business-to-consumer retail and international markets. Our business units are small packages, heavy freight and logistics. Dubai ticked all those boxes,” he says.
In a region sometimes associated with volatility, Mr Barber does not believe that the turmoil in other parts of the Middle East affects business here. “We invest in places that believe in free trade and globalisation,” he says, “that’s why we’re here.”
The emirate ticked another big box too, the one marked “Expo 2020”. UPS was what Mr Barber calls the “backbone of logistics” for the Olympic Games in London and Beijing, and he believes that experience puts the company in pole position to be Dubai’s partner in the massive logistics job involved in staging the global commercial exhibition just six years from now.
“Expo presents many of the challenges we saw in the Olympics. We are talking to the authorities here, and it would be a big feather in our cap if we were able to make the right alliances and exploit the opportunities,” he says diplomatically.
There will be competition, of course, from the other major players in the global logistics business, including the Dubai-based Aramex. Mr Barber praises the achievement of Aramex in building an international business from the Middle East – “they filled a void” – but explains that it has a different business model from UPS, without the big investment in airlines and other infrastructure.
There are other differences in the business in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. Europe and North America have highly developed domestic markets, usually based on established postal delivery networks. “It’s still early days for the Middle East in this respect, but it is changing rapidly,” he says.
There has been much talk recently about the possibility of personal delivery by drones, but this does not appear to be one of Mr Barber’s priorities. “It might be a slice of the market, but I believe robots and robotisation of the business is more appropriate. This industry is all about consolidation, about how much you can physically pick up and move in one go, and robot systems are very important for sorting and delivery.”
UPS will not deliver to every country in the world, however. He is naturally aware of the embargo in place against Iran, for example. “But circumstances change, and there are big countries out there,” he says. And “Browntails” do not fly into Russia, although UPS serves that country in other ways.
After 29 years in the job, from driver to senior executive, a little corporate pride is only to be expected: “We’ve got the best global network in the world, period,” he says.
fkane@thenational.ae
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