Unitrans CEO Conversation

0:05
Welcome to the Unitrans Podcast. In today’s episode, we look forward to having a strategic CEO level conversation focused on how Unitrans leadership thinks about progress and growth in complex African operating environments. Through this episode, we’ll have a chance to step back and examine how those elements come together at an organisational and leadership level. Joining me in our discussion is CEO of Unitrans, Edwin Hewitt.

0:32
Welcome, Edwin. We really appreciate having you here. And we look forward to having a discussion around how leaders interpret progress beyond scale or output, including partnerships, decision making, and purpose. Thank you so much for joining us today.

0:46
It’s a pleasure and thank you.

0:48
To start us off, throughout the season, growth has been explored in many forms. From a CEO perspective, how do you think about growth today?

0:57
When people talk about growth, most people talk about growth in top line or some financial measure. I think it’s important to take a longer-term view on growth. Growth must have a plan, it must have a purpose, it must create some level of sustainable value, not only for shareholders but for people, for employees of the company. And growth, ultimately, is the fuel that fires a business.

1:28
If you have growth and you have success in your financial results; the culture of the business gravitates toward a positive space where people can see growth. We can employ more people. We can stimulate the economy. I think growth is a complex topic. It’s not only about some kind of financial measure. It must have sustainability in it. It must create sustainability in both the market you’re operating and for the people that operate in the business.2:01
Beyond kilometres, tonnage or revenue, what signal suggests meaningful progress for a logistics business operating in complex environments?

2:11
Meaningful progress has multiple facets to it. The first one we touched on is to create growth. The second one, in the day and age we live in AI, technology, data, is to really understand what your client wants and what your client needs. And in some cases because we’ve been doing it so long, we now have data and information and in-house expertise – we probably know more than our clients.

2:42
Let me give you an example: In our Sugar Estates, we’ve worked with a company called Value Chain Partners or Value Chain Solutions, where we’ve mapped every step of the value chain in the customer’s business and we look at every one of those steps, how they aggregate. Knowing your client, knowing who and what you are as a business, understanding the people, capacity and capability that you have in the business and then mobilising and mastering everybody towards a plan with a purpose and outcomes and managing that, ultimately creates sustainability and success in growth for business.

3:20
Partnerships we see have been spoken about a lot in this podcast. Partnerships feature strongly across Unitrans operations. Why are collaboration and long-term relationships so important to long-term resilience and continuity?

3:33
Partnerships feature at multiple levels in an organisation. I think the first partnership that’s an entry point into your business is obviously the partnership of your suppliers. Having good partnership with your suppliers, sustainable partnerships and the network of suppliers today are global. They’re not local only.

3:52
The second level of partnerships is the people we go into business with, in the communities we operate in. In most cases for our passenger business, we have partners there. In the African countries we operate in without exception in those countries we have partnerships and being in a country, having a partner in that country, understanding the culture, understanding the language, understanding the business environment, you know that just makes you stronger to operate.

4:21
Partnerships have always been at the core of our business. We also have technology partners that we work with. I quoted VCS to you earlier that we work with extensively to work with data.

4:34
We also have innovation partners where we look at new technologies that operates in our business. The case in point, we have a partnership with the trailer manufacturer, and we transport day old chicks and the mortality rate of these chicks, some cases are up to 50%. We’ve designed a new trailer where the mortality rate is virtually 0.

4:53
Having partnerships in technology, having partnerships with suppliers, just makes you stronger as an organisation.

5:00
Looking at the future, when you look ahead at Africa’s logistics landscape, what shifts or forces do you believe will shape the kind of leadership required in the years to come without forecasting specific outcomes?

5:15
Africa is a big place. I think Africa as a whole, we do not operate in the whole of Africa. We mainly operate in East Africa. We’re looking at West Africa and then what we classically call SADEC. Interesting dynamic in Africa is that 95% of everything that comes in and out of Africa comes through a port. Whatever that is, in or out, goes on a corridor to major cities predominantly. Understanding those corridors, understanding what comes in and out, trying to find the balance in that network using the data we have at our disposal. To operate in Africa (and it’s an ever-dynamic changing landscape) is the big cities and towns near us are urbanising in Africa, which is a positive thing that creates a different consumer demand and a different consumer request. A simple example of sugar, there’s a sugar deficit in our region because as people urbanise, there’s an aspirational thing to use more sugar related products.

6:25
Understanding the dynamics of the changing landscape, being agile and what you offer into that landscape and choosing where you want to play in that landscape because you cannot be everything to everybody. We’ve done extensive work, research work, to understand every country we operate in, but it’s proper work, understanding the dynamics, the economics of that country. And then we decide who we want to be in that country, who we partner in that country. And then we go and invest.

6:55
We’ve been in certain of these countries like Malawi, Swaziland, Namibia and Botswana, some of them for 50 years. We have extensive and long-term experience in those countries and to operate in them.

7:06
On that point, how do innovation, people and purpose come together in shaping leadership, decision making and strategic direction?

7:14
Innovation and technology go hand in hand. But you need to decide who you are, what you want to do, where do you want to compete and play. And then you need to innovate in what you do. A whole lot of stuff today is around AI. A lot of focus is put on data.

7:39
We have extensive data on everything we do. It is converting that data into something that has meaning and making good and sound management and investment decisions based on data and facts and technology. Innovating with information you have, innovating to improve efficiency, innovating to make your business more sustainable. A large portion of innovation comes from partnerships discussed earlier.

8:07
Secondly, is also having talent in your business that’s got that innovation bent that can think about how do we change processes, how do we innovate in what we do, how do we introduce new technologies, how we become the forefront of the markets and the clients that we choose to partner.

8:30
Looking at it from an environment that you operate in, we know it’s a very complex environment. From a leadership perspective, what responsibilities matter most when making decisions in complex, high impact logistics environments?

8:43
The first and foremost one in our environment, because we operate in all these countries, we operate on sugar estates, we operate in mines, we operate in South Africa, we do millions of kilometres, we transport 12 million passengers a year. These are complex environments and you know the infrastructure is not always there.

9:04
So safety is certainly #1. Our safety is led by a colleague of ours, Leonard Maleluka, who is doing a phenomenal job, where we’ve changed the safety culture, we’ve centralised the safety, we’ve got the right safety systems in here and we start every meeting with a safety moment. We inculcate the culture of safety in our business. Safety is very important.

9:30
The next thing is everything around people. It’s an old cliche, but if you have the right talent in your business at all levels, not only at the executive level, and you’ve got them focused and they know they’re part of a growth story and you have the right culture in your business, you’ll achieve results. People are very important.

9:50
Then, any business should have some form of value. There must be values, there must be a purpose, there must be ethics in your company. And that culture inculcation starts with the leadership of the business.

10:04
So if you have safety, if you understand your people, you have a very clear and a decisive plan and you’re decisive in your decisions, in the world we live in today you need to be decisive, you need to be sure what you do, consult and then make a decision and stick with that decision. We have changed the culture of our organisation to focus on all these things. And we have also changed the culture over the last few years being a very disciplined environment that we operate in, disciplined in the way we report, disciplined in how we act safely. It is a cultural shift that we’ve achieved to achieve these things.

10:43
I can definitely attest to chatting to a lot of your colleagues. Safety is a primary thing that we have learned about in the last couple of episodes that we have discussed. Kudos to you and your team for that. So, across your leadership journey, which principles or lessons have proven most valuable in navigating uncertainty and ensuring progress with purpose?

11:04
It’s a big and important question and it’s not a question that can just simply be answered. If I reflect on a long career and you know, when you choose to be in a logistics, you choose a tough route in life. It’s not always easy. But if I reflect on this, is understanding who you are as a business, what’s in your DNA, and then positioning that DNA to a purpose and really understanding your clients because the biggest business opportunity is with your existing clients and we have many of those in multiple industries we choose to play in.

11:43
If you understand your clients, you’ve got your people focused on that. You’ve got a shareholder that’s willing to invest in your business, so you’ve got access to capital. But capital is not a luxury. Capital is actually a privilege to have, and you understand where to invest this capital to get the best returns for everybody because you want to reinvest in this business and you clearly communicate your plans and you have a strong culture of discipline and compliance, the probability of success is high.

12:15
I wish I could quote that actually. I really appreciate your input on that. So, if we look at the future now, where do you see the future of logistics going?

12:26
Look, however you look at AI or data or drones or technology, however you look at it, something must go from point A to point B. Can you do it more efficiently? Can you use a different technology to do it? Yes, you can.

12:44
The world has gone through two major shocks, COVID being one, which made a whole lot of people realise how important supply chains and rigidity in supply chains is. And now the latest scenario where we have understood what energy security is.

13:04
The interesting change in that now is that the minerals that are abundant around where we are in Africa; copper, lithium, cobalt, rare earths, get used for energy storage. When you look at those minerals a few years ago it was all about green and ESG and carbon neutral. Now it’s just about energy security.

13:31
The world is an interesting and resilient place. South Africa, Africa is an interesting, resilient place. Being able to adapt and convert supply chains, think about things differently, that is certainly the future. It’s about agility because these things are not rigid. They can’t go in the same routes, you know? I think a combination of technology; you will always have a human interface. There are an interpretation and an input component that can’t be replaced by technology.

14:06
I think the logistics environment we live; it’s a spatial game. We live in a big place with vast distances between major producers and cities, and we now live in a global environment where we have supply chains that go all over the globe. It is changing.

14:26
Technology will influence it, but there’s certain components of it, to get copper cathode down from the DRC to a port and then get fertiliser back. The preferred route is still a truck.

14:40
There is positive signs in Southern Africa of rail making a comeback with privatisation from Transnet. That will certainly have an influence because certainly bulk transport with rail is still the cheapest option. It’s the most economical option to transport bulk materials rather than transporting with trucks.

15:02
So, it is a changing environment, but if you’re agile and you’re adaptable, you can change to that. And it’s very important where you decide you want to compete and play in that logistics space. As an organisation, and this is an important point, is classical logistics of trucks going up and down a corridor or a highway, that’s certainly not what we’re doing. We are converting our business into logistics and supply chain services business where we look at the value chain of our client and we understand that value chain and we have made a conscious decision that we’re going to play inside that value chain as a broader services business than just a single component business.

15:44
I love the fact that you’re very positive about the future, which is always great to hear. Through this episode, we’ve learned that progress is most durable when its intentional, people led, and purpose driven. Thank you, Edwin, for offering a strategic perspective on how leaders think about the next phase of their journey. You’ve reminded us that progress is built through leadership, partnership, and long-term thinking.

16:07
In our next episode, we have a collaborative roundtable exploring the future of African logistics from a regional perspective. This is an episode our audience from around the world will want to tune into.
Don’t miss it.