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SCA’s history dates back to a number of 17th century companies, which were eventually brought together by the founding father, Ivar Kreuger, one of the most remarkable personalities of the early 20th century in Sweden. He helped turn the several individual companies in Northern Sweden into a competitive group called Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget. SCA was incorporated in 1929 as a holding company for some ten forest industry companies producing sawn goods and paper pulp in Northern Sweden. SCA then began transporting goods from the northern harbours of Sweden in the 1960s to SCA’s terminals throughout Europe, bringing about the formation of SCA Transforest AB (SCA Shipping at that time) in 1967. Today SCA Transforest is one of the leading transport and logistics companies in the forest products segment.
The company’s operations are organised in two main business areas, as Magnus Svensson, the president of the company explains: “Interforest Terminals, is a network of strategically located forest products terminals in Europe, offering forwarding, stevedoring, warehousing, ships agency and other administrative services.
“Another major activity is marine transportation where cargo is carried partly by a specially designed fleet of RoRo vessels in system traffic and partly by chartering on the market. Our marine services also include extensive short sea traffic in Europe as well as large overseas volumes, which are containerised to a considerable extent.”
The company’s third area of business is Transforest IT & Logistics, the consultancy unit with the ambition to develop leading logistics solutions.
With a turnover of around 245 million euros, the company has strongly related distribution centres dotted all across Europe. The company operates from a number of own large forest products terminals plus a number of smaller associated terminals, which are warehouses that it does not own, but has signed a contract with local partners for a certain warehouse space and to supply labour. “The terminals work under the name Interforest Terminals and are located in Umeå and Sundsvall (Sweden), Rotterdam (Netherlands), London (Great Britain), Grenaa (Denmark) and Lübeck (Germany).
Associated terminals are located in Vasaa (Finland), Skövde (Sweden), Dublin (Ireland), Hull (Great Britain), Lisbon (Portugal), Philadelphia (USA) and on the way is Livorno (Italy). We work on the main interforest terminals, which are in places like Finland, South Sweden, Dublin, Hull, Lisbon, Philadelphia and we also own a terminal in Denmark.”
Magnus continues by commenting on a major contract that the company successfully acquired in Rotterdam last year: “Star Shipping, the world’s largest forest products carrier, owns and carries both breakbulk and container cargos and has always had to utilise different terminals for each, which eventually cost them in lost time. In order to speed the turnaround of the vessels in the port, they wanted both containers and breakbulk to be serviced in a single terminal, resulting in us drawing up a five-year contract with them to enable this facility in our Rotterdam terminal.
“We always try to ensure that customers receive a good service,” states Magnus, “by offering additional services like IT support. We also carry out tracking and tracing replacing for every roller or bale pane or pallet and communicate with customers through EDI messages, so that clients are able to have complete control of their distribution network.”
He adds: “Our workforce is as vital to our business as our customers and the company invests significantly in staff development, as I believe that a business runs better with well-trained employees.”
Magnus highlights the challenges faced by the company: “It is a good market to be in especially from the transport point of view and we are confident the market will continue to expand. At the moment, we are in a very advantageous position as our terminals are in very strategic locations allowing us to receive large vessels of any type with almost no restrictions. As the company grows, we would otherwise have to move to bigger terminals and ports in order to receive even larger vessels, so locations and surrounding infrastructure are vital to us.” Continuing, he states the key reasons contributing to the company’s success: “The most important factor is the location of terminals and since we’ve been in the business for almost 40 years, we are widely known in the market with a reputation for good quality. In addition to that, we are more than capable of increasing our capacity and work mainly with long term contracts.”
With thoughts on the future, Magnus concludes: “We are actively looking to grow the business in the forest products from our mother company SCA, from European shippers, as well as through North American shippers that are shipping into Europe. We’ve experienced an average growth of eight per cent since 1996 and the plan is to maintain that controlled growth, and this will most certainly be achieved through our work in the forest product segment.”
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