Sultan bin Sulayem drew attention to the evolving role of his company that was enabling it to expand its services, saying that it had moved progressively from purely port operations to logistics and ensuring strong supply chains, with improving efficiency a key objective

Latin America is a market of strategic importance to DP World, which is handling $3.5 trillion worth of global trade every year, Sultan bin Sulayem, group chairman and CEO of DP World said on Thursday at the Global Business Forum Latin America 2022 in Dubai.

“Today we handle 75 million containers around the world and in value that is about almost 11 per cent of all trade in dollars. It’s three and a half-trillion dollars of cargo that moves every year into our terminals around the world. That’s four hundred thousand dollars worth of cargo every hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year,” he said.

Sulayem drew attention to the evolving role of his company that was enabling it to expand its services, saying that it had moved progressively from purely port operations to logistics and ensuring strong supply chains, with improving efficiency a key objective.

“DP World started out as a port operator - today, we are a logistic enabler. We don’t do just port operations, we do a lot of other activities in the supply chain. And the supply chain is the most inefficient business in the world today, one that has never been disrupted,” he said.

“What I mean by the supply chain is the journey from the factory to the showroom or the customer. This journey is inefficient because basically there are so many stakeholders that nobody has disrupted it. We are disrupting our part and are involved from the factory floor to the customer. We have invested in ports around the world and increased our penetration into activities that ensure cargo goes smoothly through the port,” he said.

Sulayem also spoke of the initiatives that DP World had put in place to combat the effects of the global pandemic and alleviate the huge impact that it has had on global supply chains.