Latest / Best of Business / Mark Troughear: Freightways chief executive on the company reporting a 17 percent rise in half-year profit.

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Mark Troughear: Freightways chief executive on the company reporting a 17 percent rise in half-year profit. · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from newstalk 'B. Follow this
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  Speaker 2: Now if you're looking for assigned the economy is recovering
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  Speaker 2: here it is. Freightways has posted a strong first half result.
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  Speaker 2: Profit is up by seventeen percent, revenues up by nine percent.
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  Speaker 2: The chief executive, Mark Trowhar is with us Now, ho Mark.
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  Speaker 3: Hi, Heather, how are you?
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  Speaker 2: I'm very well? Thank you. Now can we take it
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  Speaker 2: from this that the recovery is underway?
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  Speaker 3: Look, I think it's just started in New Zealand. It's
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  Speaker 3: a good result on that spit of market share gains.
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  Speaker 3: Australia going really well for us, But in New Zealand
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  Speaker 3: you're just starting to see customers trade a little bit
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  Speaker 3: up on what they did last year. So yep, early
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  Speaker 3: stages good stuff.
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  Speaker 2: Now, why is your oversized business doing so well?
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  Speaker 3: I think it's a niche where it's often called ugly
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  Speaker 3: trade and a lot of carriers don't necessarily like it.
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  Speaker 3: So if you're delivering a bit of flat pack furniture
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  Speaker 3: your house, or you've ordered a bike, can you want
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  Speaker 3: that delivered? It's stuff that's a bit too big for couriers.
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  Speaker 3: It's a bit too small for freight forwarders, so we're
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  Speaker 3: filling that niche. And yeah, not too many direct competitors
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  Speaker 3: in that space.
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  Speaker 2: And the food and hospitality sector, from what you're seeing,
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  Speaker 2: is still lagging the rest of the economy.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think December was better, but look at it
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  Speaker 3: has certainly been a bit softer. We deliver a lot
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  Speaker 3: of more expensive food. It's salmon, it's good cuts of steak, gormet, dairy,
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  Speaker 3: all those types of things, and the domestic economy it's
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  Speaker 3: been a bit tougher. A lot of those a lot
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  Speaker 3: of those producers are sending that stuff offshore because Keywis
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  Speaker 3: aren't consuming as much of it.
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  Speaker 2: I see. Now, what is your concern about the border tax?
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  Speaker 3: Equality is my concern so fundamentally the tax or the
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  Speaker 3: fee or the levy, the customs fee, I think is
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  Speaker 3: the way they talk about it. From our point of view,
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  Speaker 3: if you bring an item over the border and it
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  Speaker 3: needs to be checked by customs, you should pay the
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  Speaker 3: same fee for that item, regardless of whether it goes
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  Speaker 3: through a commercial operator ourselves or a FedEx or a
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  Speaker 3: UPS or whoever, or whether it gets directed through a
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  Speaker 3: mail stream. So or where after simply is a level
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  Speaker 3: playing field.
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  Speaker 2: And so how much more are you paying than the
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  Speaker 2: likes of New Zealand Post.
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  Speaker 3: Well, the average item is around about half a kilo.
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  Speaker 3: We'll pay two dollars twenty one an item, although the
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  Speaker 3: customer will if it goes through the mail half a
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  Speaker 3: kilo will be about sixty cents. So we're paying close
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  Speaker 3: to four times as much for exactly the same item,
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  Speaker 3: regardless of whether you know, depending on what stream it
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  Speaker 3: goes through.
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  Speaker 2: It doesn't sound like a lot adds up.
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  Speaker 3: Look a lot of the lot of the Chinese e
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  Speaker 3: commerce players, they will shift their volume for fifty cents,
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  Speaker 3: let alone the difference of a dollar sixty So yeah,
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  Speaker 3: it can it can add up, and it can be material,
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  Speaker 3: and you don't make a whole lot of profit on
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  Speaker 3: these items in the first place, so it's not as
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  Speaker 3: if you can afford to subsidize the difference.
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  Speaker 2: Right Mark Listen, thanks for talking to us. Appreciated Mak
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  Speaker 2: trow here, who's the Froatways CEO.
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