TT Club sponsored FIATA Title Goes to South African Candidate

US – SOUTH AFRICA – WORLDWIDE – The prestigious Young International Freight Forwarder of the Year title from the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations (FIATA) has been presented this year to Daniel Terbille, an account development executive at UTi (South Africa). The award is presented in recognition of forwarding excellence and was established by FIATA with the support of the TT Club to attract talented young individuals to a career in freight forwarding and logistics. It also rewards the young winners with additional valuable training opportunities. Industry insurance association the TT Club has been a sponsor of the award since its inception and is firmly committed to the importance of individual training and development within the global freight forwarding community.

To capture the title this year’s candidates were set the task of examining the multimodal movement of a key import or export relevant to their country of operation. Extra marks were awarded based on the complexity of the cargo matter, mode of transport, routing, regulatory issues faced, plus any cross-border issues such as customs regulations and/or bonds involved. The four regional winning dissertations addressed the challenges in transporting diverse cargoes such as glass fibre mesh machines; concrete beams; electrical test and calibration units; 39 kilometres of coated carbon steel pipes; pressure valves and oversize heavy machinery as well as fabric and finished high-fashion clothing.

The coveted prize principally consists of practical and academic training and includes hands-on training experience at one of TT Club’s regional centres in London, Hong Kong or New Jersey and attendance at the “Insight into Transport Law and Insurance” course in London. The Award Steering Committee strives to make the challenge appealing to an even greater number of candidates. The FIATA structure of Association Members allows candidates to call on their day-to-day experience when working for a range of organisations, be it a small customs agent, a family business or a multi-national operator.

The winner was selected after fourteen outstanding papers from candidates across the four regions had been whittled down to the four finalists by the Steering Group of the Award. In addition to the winner who represented FIATA’s Africa and Middle East region they were Salman Ali (Canada) representing the Americas, Chris Yabsley (Australia) from the Asia Pacific region, and Nadine Baumgarten (Germany) representing Europe, all of whom who presented their dissertations to the judges at FIATA’s Annual World Congress in Los Angeles. TT Club’s EMEA Regional Director, Andrew Kemp commented:

“It was a difficult decision to pick the overall winner from these excellent participants that FIATA has again been able to present however Daniel deservedly takes this year’s award to Africa”.

He was joined by the President of FIATA, Mr Stanley Lim who said after the award ceremony:

“FIATA is impressed by the increasing level of knowledge, awareness and compliance in freight forwarding that regional winners and the overall winners manage to convey in their dissertations year after year. The judges took account of the level of the winner’s research, planning and hard work, which was recognised with full merit. All regional winners had prepared excellent dissertations in line with the description of the freight forwarding services published on the FIATA website.”

This was the 14th such award given by FIATA and documentation for the 2013 Award in its 15th edition was distributed to FIATA Association Members last month with the usual deadline for nominating candidates by 15th January 2013.

Photo: Daniel receives his award from Stanley Lim and Andrew Kemp