Expo Freight awarded ISO 9001:2008 certification

Friday, 17 January 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Expo Freight (EFL), Sri Lanka recently received the prestigious ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management Systems certification from SGS United Kingdom. The certification covers all the international transportation and logistics services provided by EFL that include sea, air and land transportation, customs house brokerage and customs bonded warehousing. SGS is the world’s leading and the most widely accredited certification body with over 40 ISO 9001 accreditations held in more than 40 countries. Commenting on the certification Expo Freight (EFL), Sri Lanka CEO Jagath Pathirane said, “As the leading Freight Forwarder in Sri Lanka we continue to raise the industry bar with our commitment to quality and customer satisfaction. Our quest is to add value to all the inputs that we have in our business by simplifying what is complex to our customers, whilst fostering innovations. Our main objective in conforming to ISO 900

1:2008 Quality Management Systems standard is to streamline our business processes to adapt to the ever-changing industry scope which is getting complex and demanding. We constantly strive for excellence and the disciplines that ISO has brought about to help us to do so by enabling us to increase performance by streamlined processes and stringent monitoring of them by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), identification of dynamic stakeholder requirements, management of risks and contingencies, and most importantly focus attention to continuous improvements and sustainability.” The ISO 9001:2008 is based on eight quality management principles; customer focus, leadership, involvement of people, process approach, system approach to management, continual improvement, fact-based decision making and mutually beneficial supplier relationships, which are used as a framework to guide organisations towards improved performance. To qualify for the certification an organisation has to successfully demonstrate its commitment to service quality, continual improvement, and customer satisfaction and adherence to international quality management standards. “Standardisation of our processes and systems has been a key focus area within our strategy to achieve excellence. Continuous improvement and business process re-engineering will challenge what is considered and established as standard to foster innovation. This has contributed significantly to our market-leading performance and with ISO certification we have proven that not only quantity or volume that matters but quality,” added Pathirane. As one of the largest freight forwarders in the Asian sub-continent and the sub-Saharan region of Africa, providing integrated, supply chain management of logistics services, Expo Freight (EFL) business operations and state-of-the-art facilities are run by a professional and skilled workforce who are dedicated and experienced. Having established itself as a premier provider of services to the fashion industry, EFL has a total of 17 own operations in Africa, the Middle East and Asia and represents multiple agents in the Indian sub-continent with 45 offices.