Farooq Shaikh is the CEO of LogiPoint, the leading operators of Logistics Parks and Economic Zones in the Kingdom. LogiPoint started its journey as the first and only Bonded and Re-Export Zone in the Kingdom and has established itself as a platform that enables the Logistics and Supply Chain industry with innovative solutions and pioneering initiatives.
Farooq has over 20+ years of high impact experience in the Middle East shipping and logistics industry and has previously held senior leadership roles with industry leading global organizations in UAE, Pakistan, Kuwait, Iraq, and Jordan before coming to KSA.
In 2009, Farooq joined the SISCO (Publicly listed: http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/SISCO:AB) Group’s SAR 2 Billion Red Sea Gateway Terminal project as part of the core senior management team and played an instrumental role in building, launching and operationalizing the first privately built state-of-the-art container terminal in the Kingdom.
Since 2018, Farooq has been leading LogiPoint as the CEO and is committed to transforming the organization into a Regional Logistics Hub, which has a stated mission to act as enablers of the Logistics Industry as a whole and to go ‘One Step Further’ in working extensively with the industry stakeholders to anticipate and understand the needs of the market, to identify opportunities for growth and development, and to design, introduce and implement innovative solutions which contribute towards the realization of Vision 2030.
Some of the Logistics solutions that LogiPoint have rolled out over his tenure are as follows:
Export Distribution Hub:
Petrochemicals is the Kingdom’s single largest export, with hundreds of thousands of containers exported annually to destinations all across the world. LogiPoint worked tirelessly with the Petrochemical majors and with high volume exporters to re-engineer the entire export process and to bring the clients closer to their markets by reducing the lead time between order and delivery. In this high-volume, high-stakes industry, this efficiency in logistics translates to vital competitive edge for KSA exporters in the international market.
Cross-border Gulf:
Shipments originating in Europe and the Americas, and passing through the Red Sea, typically have a transit time of 8-12 days ahead of them to reach the GCC ports in the Arabian Gulf. LogiPoint introduced the Cross-border Gulf service under which shipments can be discharged in Jeddah and moved to ports and final destinations in the GCC countries via bonded trucking. This helps reduce the transit times by 7-10 days and translates to greater efficiency as well as higher revenues and profitability for the clients.
Sea/Air and Air/Sea:
LogiPoint have been working extensively with the industry stakeholders and the regulatory bodies to design and streamline multimodal movement of shipments seamlessly. Thanks to the initiatives taken by LogiPoint, it is now possible in KSA to import one leg of a shipment by sea, move it under bond to the desired airport, and load it out by air freight to its final destination. Similarly, air-freight imports can be moved to the LogiPoint bonded and re-export zone for consolidation before being shipped out by Sea. This is an important development in putting the KSA on the world logistics map as a strategically located multimodal logistics hub.
As the world comes to terms with the new set of normal in a post COVID-19 world, Farooq is looking to lead LogiPoint into this new world as an important stakeholder in the regional logistics market.
