World Grain - January 2019 - 70

FEATURE: WHEAT CONSUMPTION RISING IN AFRICA

"It's one thing to have the wheat, to have the
quality, but it's another to also have the logistics."
Jean-Pierre Langlois-Berthelot, France Export Cereales
rainy season, so basically that's going to have a play
on how the next six months are going to be in terms of
grain importation."
He said Kenya, for example, often turns to its neighbors should domestic maize production falter but looks
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"If it is maize, we buy from neighboring countries
such as Zambia and Uganda because maize is the staple commodity," he said. "When it comes to wheat, we
have our own wheat, but we get the surplus from countries such as Argentina, Russia and Ukraine."
LOGISTICS CHALLENGES
Jean-Pierre Langlois-Berthelot, board member and
past president of France Export Cereales, said French
exporters continued to target Africa and often had
longstanding contacts that prevented logistics delays
at key ports such as Lagos, Nigeria, for West Africa,
and Mombasa, Kenya, a key gateway along with Dar
es Salaam to East Africa.
"It's one thing to have the wheat, to have the quality,
but it's another to also have the logistics," he said. "In
France there has been for a very long time some small
companies that are highly specialized to serve Africa,
especially western Africa.
"They have vessels that go from one port to another
port and they don't get delayed, which is not always
the case with Black Sea supplies. There are French operators that have been working there for a long, long,
long, long time and they know how to meet the needs
of the market.
"For example, you can have a miller who has 30,000
tonnes of storage capacity in Africa and he is importing on the basis of 25,000 tonnes. He can receive his
vessel only when he only has less than 5,000 tonnes of
supplies but he can't let his storage supplies fall to zero
or his competitors will take his market. So this is the
adjustment needed here. You need to have good products, but you need also to have good logistics to meet
the needs of customers.
"Also, in some countries you need to understand the
internal logistics. If you have mills that are at the ports,
that's okay. But when you have mills that are a lot of
kilometers inland, then you can have a problem with
70

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are railways, so logistics is a huge problem."
Jean Charzat, director of agribusiness in Sub-Sahara
$IULFDDW%XQJHDOVRKLJKOLJKWHGWKHORJLVWLFVGLI¿FXOties of supplying imports to Africa. He said Mombasa,
the Kenyan gateway to eastern Africa, especially landlocked Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, Burundi and
parts of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo more
than a thousand miles inland, had suffered chronic port
delays two years ago that saw cargoes held up for as
long as six months. Although the situation has now
been resolved, he said many ports in Africa would benH¿WIURPLPSURYHGVWRUDJHKDQGOLQJDQGRQZDUGGLVtribution facilities.
"Mombasa doesn't have big delays now, but there
is limited storage and, if you think about the demand
in Kenya and Uganda and other countries, and how
quickly this is growing, they need to increase discharge
facilities in the ports and also their storage facilities,"
he said.
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"In Nigeria it's more related to the fact that most of
the milling industry is located inside the port of Lagos
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the port without waiting a couple of weeks at the gate,
which is crazy," he said. "The port facilities are also
too old.
"In many African countries you assume bottlenecks
with logistics in the ports or logistics in the transportation, but there have been also some improvements
in other countries. For example, there is a new port in
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improvement to the capacity of the country.
"But Africa could make a lot of improvements to its
ports and land transportation and this would reduce the
cost of its imports."
Michael King is a multi-award-winning journalist as well as
a shipping and logistics consultant. He also supplies an array
of corporate services - www.mkingassociates.com. For more
information, e-mail mikeking121@gmail.com.
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January 2019 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com

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World Grain - January 2019

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