Year in Review
CEO Michael Byrne says, "The 2011 Financial Year brought mixed results for Linfox Logistics."
While our operating and financial performances varied during the year, Linfox is now on a firm path to meet its 2015 Strategy goals. The restructure of our business this month will embed continuous improvement across Asia Pacific operations.
Safety
The safety team has developed the systems and strategy to ensure we reach our 2015 safety targets so that we continue on the journey to achieve our Vision ZERO. This is a shared obligation for all of us at Linfox.
Business growth
Traditional manufacturing and retailing industries in east coast Australia and New Zealand are under great economic pressure. This affected our financial performance in the 2011 Financial Year (FY 2011).
Floods in Australia and the earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand also affected business, but our teams worked well to help customers through these challenges. We are focused on re-establishing profitable growth, particularly with new work in Australia’s booming resources industry and rapidly expanding Asian economies.
There were significant business achievements during the year.
• Linfox renewed its contract with Coles and Liquorland stores in New South Wales for five years.
• We began work for Fortescue Metals Group in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, and continue to build our resources industry capability.
• We commissioned the Melbourne national distribution centre for National Foods, a major asset in our customer’s supply chain.
• In China our work with Unilever and Tesco has grown.
• In Malaysia we won new distribution work for ExxonMobil and renewed important contracts with two other major customers.
• Linfox New Zealand won work with Bunnings and renewed its contract with Nestle. We also introduced a unique solution for customers in the carpet industry.
• We won new fuel distribution work with Caltex in several Australian markets.
• Linfox maintained fuel distribution to retail outlets in Australia which ExxonMobil sold to 7-Eleven; and won new fuel distribution for South Australia’s Peregrine retail chain.
• We formed a joint venture with Agility Logistics to seek new resources industry business. Agility is the lead logistics partner for our work with Western Australia’s Gorgon project.
Our Industrial Business Unit was renamed the Resources & Industrial Business Unit to reflect the focus of our expertise on winning more work in Australia’s resources industry.
Innovation
We completed developing and implementing OptiFox for retail application. OptiFox is an advanced forecasting and planning tool that allows us to work closely with customers to boost efficiencies in allocating transport resources. A number of other online portals were developed to allow Linfox and customers to better plan resource allocation for specific transport needs.
People
Our Indigenous Employment Program was officially launched by Australia’s Indigenous Employment Minister, Senator Arbib and we employed more than 100 Indigenous Australians, on the way to meeting our 2013 target of 500.
Linfox College continues to develop its broad range of courses for employees. This includes advanced management courses at some of the world’s leading business schools.
For the first time our Graduate Program intake included six Asian graduates, ensuring that we train future leaders for our growing Asian business. Twelve school graduates joined Linfox’s Cadet Program this year.
Sustainability
We continue to implement measures to achieve our sustainability goal of reducing the rate of greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2015. We have already reduced our rate of emissions by 28 per cent since 2007. The 1,000th Linfox driver was recently trained through our Eco-Drive program, a key element in reducing emissions. During the year we introduced an Environmental Management System to help our sites comply with environmental regulations and our new Greenfox Site Habits guide helps operations reduce waste and energy usage.
Future directions
We are now in a very strong position to achieve our 2015 Strategy goals. Our Safety Plan ensures we have systems, leadership and behaviours to achieve our safety targets. The new business structure will drive continuous improvement and profitable growth across our Asia Pacific operations.