Profitable route

FESCO transport group jointly with SBI Bank (member of Japan’s SBI Holdings) has organized a partnership discount offer for the transportation from Russia to Japan and other Asia-Pacific countries. A 15% discount applies to the first groupage cargo shipment. This decision is aimed to balance import and export shipments by attracting new customers.

As Borislav Scherbakov, Head of the Groupage Cargo Department of FESCO Integrated Transport (a part of FESCO Group) told "1520 International", the promotion started on November 21, a week after FESCO and SBI Bank had signed a relevant agreement of intent.

"The main purpose is to attract new clients involved in foreign trade activities with Japan by providing them with additional financial instruments and consulting support from the bank. Today we see high demand for Japanese goods in the market. Many shippers contact FESCO Supply Chain with questions on the process of purchase and mutual settlements with Japan", - said Borislav Scherbakov.

In his opinion, exporters and importers of goods from Japan need an affiliated bank, which is ready to offer mutual settlements in yen and convenient financial instruments. Such a solution would balance export-import flows, because today a greater volume is accounted for by the transportation of groupage cargo from (rather than to) Japan.

According to SBI Bank, to avail themselves of this offer, Russian exporters and importers can make a request to the bank manager, and then FESCO specialists will help them choose the optimal variant of groupage cargo transportation taking into consideration the discount. Regular railway, sea and air services are available for such shipments.

"At present the Japanese bank SBI has actively joined the race for customers from among Russian small and medium-sized businessmen, who are already working or considering the possibility to work with partners from Japan and, potentially, China and South-East Asian countries", - said Yuri Shurygin, General Director of the International Export Promotion Agency.

"The joint campaign with FESCO is unlikely to have a serious impact on increasing the supply of Russian products to Japan, - the expert said. - It makes more sense to consider it as the bank’s first step to provide additional expanded services to its clients from among the participants of foreign economic activity".

According to Yuri Shurygin, in the long-term perspective, Japan is certainly an interesting and promising market for Russian companies, but now there are more and more requests from Russian producers to enter the markets of friendly countries - especially the CIS and the EAEU. This also applies to companies whose production sites are located in the Far Eastern regions.

It should be noted that the partnership promotion has become the first experience of FESCO’s cooperation with the representative office of a Japanese bank in Russia in the B2B segment. Previously, the transport group has already organized a similar project with Tinkoff Bank, focused on domestic groupage cargo transportation.

Anna Yakusheva