Successful I Quarter of 2022, Growth Over 25% – Company Meridian from Banjaluka Developing Intermodal Transport

“We are intensively planning the development of intermodal transport, based on the road-rail-boat principle, as the environmentally most acceptable, modern and cheapest form of goods transport”.

The business year 2021 was a very successful business year for Meridian a.d.

The construction and the moving into the impressive Logistics Center were completed, the high-rack warehouse was put into operation, the new business unit, Distribucija i skladistenje (Distribution and Storage) opened, and all this resulted in an increased employment.

The company Meridian a.d. was awarded at the traditional event “The Selection of the Most Successful in the Economy of Republika Srpska for 2021” of the Chamber of Commerce of RS (PKRS) in the category: Important Investment and Contribution to Employment and received the plaque for “A Responsible Taxpayer in the Sector of Transport and Forwarding”, which the Association of Employers of RS awards based on the highest paid gross salary per worker in the observed sector.

Let us remind that the company exists since 1948, it was successfully privatized in 2001, since when it has been operating as a joint-stock company for transport, logistics, storage and services in the field of goods customs clearance.

Today, it covers all the checkpoints in BiH with logistics centers in Banjaluka, Tuzla and Sarajevo. In addition to BiH, with 19 branch offices, companies with the same core activity have been founded in Serbia and Slovenia. The company employs over 180 workers, provides services for over 3,000 clients, legal and natural persons in the country and abroad.

As they point out, in their operations, they strive to preserve the several-decades-long continuity in the standardization of services and employee education, all this to the great satisfaction of their clients.

The current year 2022 is also promising. According to the general manager of Meridian a.d., Andjelko Sobot, it is still early to make the right assessment of the effects of the work and the operations, but they have reason to be satisfied: the data about the income realized in I quarter of 2022, compared to the same period last year, show a growth of over 25%. So, the higher quality of services in storage operations and the unification of all the business functions in one place have led to an increased employment a higher overall service quality.

The consequences of the two-year pandemic and now the global disturbance in supply chains caused by the war in the European territory are visible. However, regardless of the global disturbance with natural or artificial causes, supply chains simply must function.

This also pertains to Meridian a.d, which operated throughout the pandemic, constantly providing the services of transport, distribution, storage, customs clearance and customs mediation.

Andjelko Sobot says that the company “has adopted to the situation” when it comes to the challenge of managing and running a logistics-transport organization with 20 branch offices in three states in a global disturbance situation such as the pandemic, energy shortages and the brain drain of quality workforce, and explains:

– We continue to invest in the digitization of services in all spheres, further standardization and unification of services, strengthening of the fleet of transportation units and education of the employees by opening new branch offices. The project of the development of a container terminal is current at the moment. It entails the revitalization of the rail terminal, the construction of an access platform for the handling of containers and the securing of suitable equipment (a stacker) for the handling of containers.

We are intensively planning the development of intermodal transport, based on the road-rail-boat principle as the environmentally most acceptable, modern and cheapest form of goods transport.

Meridian is a leading company in Republika Srpska, and on the level of BiH, it has a 13% market share and, observed by its income, it is one of the top three companies with the identical code of operations and activities.

Each year, Meridian’s analytical-business team analyzes the market competition on a sample of 52 companies. The companies from the sample realized around EUR 106 million in 2017, and in 2019, the income grew by as much as EUR 26 million.

In 2020, the overall drop in economic activities, caused by the pandemic, also had an impact on the reduction of scope of operations in the field. An income of EUR 129 million was realized in the observed companies, which is far above the income from 2017.

The conclusion of these analyses is that the BiH market is growing and that it has a great potential for development, and Meridian a.d. intends to fully realize this potential.

– What sets us apart from the competition are the stability and the durability of our operations. We have existed for over seven decades and we have proven to be a partner you can trust – Andjelko Sobot talks about the company he leads with a justified pride and adds that, when it comes to trends in the transportation market, in the BiH territory, he is noticing a consolidation of the logistics-transport sector and the presence of big transport-logistics companies headquartered in the EU, which are a very strong competition which requires increasingly higher service standards.

– Local production-service companies are starting to realize the importance of logistics as an important function in business operations and they are choosing between the option of developing that function themselves or addressing a specialized partner. Calculations show the lowest costs through the outsourcing of certain business functions and that’s where we come in – Sobot concludes.