GDEX tightens collaboration with Yamato

KUALA LUMPUR: GD Express Carrier Bhd (GDEX) has signed a memorandum of business collaboration with Japan’s Yamato Group to explore growth opportunities in the Asean region.
“To achieve our long-term goal, we need a strong working relationship. Yamato will nominate one non-independent non-executive director to the GDEX board and second a few specialists to GDEX to facilitate on the innovations and operational efficiencies. Furthermore, GDEX and Yamato will also form working teams to work on business collaboration in both the domestic and regional markets,” GDEX group CEO Teong Teck Lean told reporters at the signing of the memorandum yesterday.
Some of the areas of growth that the two parties will look at are international TA-Q-BIN and Cool TA-Q-BIN delivery services, collaboration of delivery network in Malaysia, linehaul collaboration in Malaysia and Singapore, express custom clearance between Malaysia-Singapore from Yamato to GDEX as well as joint business collaboration opportunities in other Asean countries.
The business collaboration follows the completion of a private placement whereby Yamato’s wholly-owned subsidiary Yamato Asia Pte Ltd subscribed to GDEX 10% private placement.
Yamato has further increased its stake to 22.8% by acquiring more shares from existing major shareholders Teong and Singapore Post. Yamato is now the second largest shareholder of GDEX.
Teong said Singapore Post will remain an important partner to GDEX, despite paring down its stake to 11.2%.
Teong said some of the business plans may incur significant capital expenditure (capex), hence the working teams will be tasked to analyse the feasibility of the plans. Each business plan will be localised to fit the market in the country.
“This year we are investing in further enhancement of our network as well as to improve a lot of customer service to allow the customers to have the type of experience they would expect. This is one area we are looking at.
“We will also be looking at how to invest in technology to further enhance some of our weak areas to further meet customers’ expectations,” he said, adding that it will also invest in call centres in some of the major cities to improve customer experience.
Teong said GDEX’s capex on a yearly basis is about RM17 million to RM18 million and it expects more to be allocated for the coming year.
Of the RM217.3 million proceeds from the private placement, RM20 million is for working capital while RM180 million is for capex including expansions, potential investments and collaboration.