A NEW VENTURE IN TRADING

Alistair Group’s trading journey started in 2021 as an occasional chemical sale to service key clients. However, it was only in 2022 that we decided to fully integrate trading into our core competencies, as opposed to being a per-client / project-specific offering.

Our focus is on chemicals for the mining industry; mostly high-volume orders of chemicals, such as sulphur. We source from manufacturers all over the world, stockpile in key locations at major ports and warehouses and provide an all-inclusive solution to bring the desired quality and quantity to the customer’s site.

This service line was birthed after meeting with a number of our clients in DRC and Tanzania and recognizing their need for an end-to-end chemical solution. We discovered that sourcing the chemicals from their place of manufacture was not particularly difficult, but the task of consistently moving that order to DRC / Tanzania on time and within budget was a major challenge for most of them.  

With our network, assets and expertise on the ground, we were able to package together competitively priced solutions to source and deliver these chemicals – with a particular advantage in the final mile delivery, at a time when demand for trucks far outweighed the capacity available. With the fierce competition for trucking capacity and the rising cost of transport in the region, our competitors would equally struggle to deliver their orders on time. We have proven to be one of the most reliable options in that regard.

Alistair Group also found synergies between the needs of the clients and the trading companies buying the metals. We essentially created various ’roundtrip’ scenarios for these clients, giving them peace of mind that they did not have to go to the market to source and compete for fresh trucking capacity every month.

Matt Edwards  | Commercial Lead – Road Freight  |  01 December 2022