Monthly Archives: May 2018

Why it’s important for Greencarrier to offer internships

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Categories: All, News, Tips & Trends. Tags: , , , , .

An internship at Greencarrier should be a win-win situation

When we search for new employees to join us, the most important thing for us is to find the right person; a skilled person with the right mindset and values that is compliant with ours. This of course also applies when we recruit for internships. We live by the core values involvement, commitment, humour and joy. Focusing on these common values helps us to improve the cooperation and communication between employees, offices and different countries. Besides, it helps us to trust each other and it creates a working environment where you can be yourself.

During our internships, we get the opportunity to get to know the individual and can see if there is a match regarding mindset and values. To achieve satisfaction with the internship, this match is equally important for us as a company as well as for the trainee.

Fresh perspectives and up to date

By offering internships, we often see the big benefit that they help us stay up to date and offer fresh perspectives and ideas for our business. Trainees are good at questioning processes and can often see a different way of doing things, and they dare to challenge “the way we have always done it”. The technology aspect is also important to keep in mind. Social media, business systems and programs are often easy to handle for young professionals.

Long term focus and future possibilities at Greencarrier

In everything we do at Greencarrier, we always have the ambition to think long-term. This is applicable also when it comes to internships and we put a lot of time and effort to find the right candidates. Factors such as attitude, skills and suitability for the job are essential.

You never know whether an internship leads to a full time employment or not. Our goal is always to make the internship as successful as possible, meaning that the trainee will gain professional knowledge, a new network and an insight in our industry. Hopefully, this gives us a new brand advocate that will tell others about their positive experiences of Greencarrier as an employer.

When internships lead to full time employments

We have a lot of success cases when internships have led to summer jobs or full time employments. One of our employees, Nina Calvo, started her journey at Greencarrier in 2013 whilst studying Logistics and Freight Forwarding. She started her internship at the Ocean Freight Import department and combines with the Ocean Freight Export department. During her last semester she also worked extra hours at the Road department for the UK. When she graduated in 2014, she was offered a full time position within traffic planning our trailers exporting goods to the UK. She is still with us, and since 2017 she has the responsibility for two large client accounts at the Ocean Freight Import Department for Greencarrier Freight Services Sweden.

– There are many benefits with starting out with an internship, as it gives one a good insight in the work as a freight forwarder and how the business functions. Internships can lead to the opportunity to cover during summer holidays. Many times you get a greater and faster chance to build a good foundation of knowledge and experience. It can also lead to a more permanent job when school finishes, as you build the confidence to pursue a career within the freight forwarding business, says Nina Calvo.

Nina continues:

– My best advice is to make sure that you during the internship really take the chance to understand the business properly and gain as much knowledge of the work flow as possible. Not forgetting to have fun during this time as well. My internship gave me the opportunity to a great job I really enjoy!

We hope you have enjoyed reading this article and do not hesitate to get in touch with us in the comment field below. Are you interested in working with us at the Greencarrier Group? Contact one of our Human Resource Managers at Greencarrier Freight Services or Greencarrier Liner Agency.

Observations and Trends from Russia

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Categories: All, In focus, News, Tips & Trends. Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Observations from this year’s exhibition

This year was a very busy and active exhibition, it was tightened to three days instead of four and the number of visitors, 16 600 was even higher than previous years. The visitors came mostly from Russia, Baltic and CIS countries but more surprisingly there was also visitors from the Mediterranean area, such as Italy, Israel and Egypt.

This year’s exhibition had more participation from Trans-Siberian railway operators than usual, and at the same time less presence from international forwarders and shipping lines. We have noticed more Chinese forwarders joining the exhibition since the trade between China and Russia is increasing year by year. We particularly see a growing demand for smoother and cheaper door-to-door solutions from China to western parts of Russia.

A great platform for business

From a business point of view the exhibition is a great platform to meet many of our customers, partners and suppliers. We are focusing mainly on customer meetings during the three days at the exhibition. We have been working with Russian clients for several years and they now expect to meet us at TransRussia. But it’s also an opportunity to meet new potential customers and to show the Greencarrier brand and what we stand for.

Eight trends spotted at TransRussia

  1. Combinations of different transport modes for one cargo flow is increasing, for example using both sea and rail in order to shorten transit times.
  2. New transport corridors. Customers are interested in alternative solutions through different gateways as Baltic, Russian and Vladivostok ports, as well as railway corridors through Germany, Poland or directly to Russia.
  3. Rail has become a very important mode of transportation when fast transit times are crucial. Either direct China to Moscow or via Vladivostok to Moscow. As a result of this we have seen more rail operators participating in Transrussia over the past years.
  4. Focus on IT solutions. There were several companies offering IT solutions for the transport and supply chain. It was also a topic for the panel discussions performed in the conference hall during the exhibition days.
  5. Russian customs clearance have a crucial influence on what routes the customers will choose for their cargo to Russia. Therefore actions of the Russian government will have a big influence on cargo routing.
  6. Russian Ports. A trend we might see in a short future is more cargo to be routed via Russian ports, instead of Baltic and Finnish ports.
  7. Transit via Kotka. The volumes of Russian transit cargo via the port of Kotka in Finland is increasing again after many years of negative trend.
  8. The Russian economy is suffering from western sanctions and the currency volatility, which has a negative impact on the cargo volumes. The customers are waiting for the Russian Rouble to recover.

 

To sum up, there are many factors that play an important role on the market situation. We face many challenges, but also possibilities, ahead of us and we are excited to continue to serve our Russian customers and to find the best solutions in the future.

We look forward to meeting you in Moscow next year again!

Hopefully, our blog post gave you some new insights from the TransRussia exhibition and the Russian market. Are you interested to read more about multimodal transport solutions from China to Russia read our blog post: The benefits of transit in Estonia when transporting goods from China to Russia.

 If you have any questions or want more information, feel free to contact our sales personnel.