Freight & Trading Weekly Feature

Victor Vaz and Hugh Reimers

30 March 2001

When Eikos Risk Applications set up its Cape Town base it was to provide a national service to its freight forwarding clients and, according to director Hugh Reimers, it has made huge strides in the 20 months Eikos has been trading.

"Tremendous successes have also been achieved by Tim Williams and Bimesh Ugarchund in acquiring Cape Town based business in both the freight and cargo sectors. But the office has far extended its reach and built up a substantial book of perishable products business in the past eight months or so," he added. 

 "We've spent a lot of time and effort developing products for the perishable products market and this is beginning to pay off. It's a very specific product and requires not only knowledge of the industry but a different risk financing approach. We have had to develop the necessary skills within our business which exist primarily within our nerve centre based in Durban.

"However our consultants servicing Cape Town have also gained significant knowledge of the perishables industry, a fact which has not gone unnoticed by clients.'

Durban-based Joint Managing Director, Victor Vaz, believes that the company's perishable product is a revolutionary one.

"We undertook a pragmatic assessment of risks confronting the perishable cargo industry, principally within the supply chain and looked at ways of financing these risks through insurance vehicles and other risk management instruments," Vaz told FTW. 

Because of the inherent volatility of the perishables industry, the focus is on re-engineering the existing cost of these risks which Vaz believes are inefficiently financed throughout the supply chain.

"Traditional marine insurance has proved inadequate for the perishable industry. The applicable 'Institute Clauses' will respond to only 20% of material loss or damages incurred, which is why Eikos has designed a risk financing facility that caters for varying risk needs and meets the divergent needs of both insured and insurer."

 "It is in line with the company's philosophy of transforming cost to opportunity whilst protecting against losses, mixing insurance and other financial instruments to provide solutions that transform risk into reward. says Vaz."

 Professor John Morris, Professor of tax at U.C.T. and a director of Eikos Risk Applications, also offers strategic tax consultancy from Eikos's offices in Standard Bank Centre on the foreshore.

This article is reproduced with the permission of the publisher.