BY Emmanuel Oluebube, Correspondent UK

The digital freight platform, Saloodo!, now also offers transports from Switzerland to the EU and vice versa. The logistics start-up is thus one of the first to offer transports to Switzerland via its freight exchange. Saloodo! has also thought about customs clearance.

Transporting goods from the EU to countries subject to customs duties, such as Switzerland, is always a problem for exporting companies. There is too much respect for the bureaucratic hurdles and the process of customs clearance in general. Small and medium-sized enterprises in particular therefore prefer to forego the business opportunities that trade with Switzerland opens up for them. The same is true the other way round, because Swiss companies also face the challenges of exporting their goods to the EU.

This is precisely where the logistics start-up Saloodo! comes in, which for the first time now enables companies to tender transport orders that lead from the EU to Switzerland as well as vice versa from Switzerland to the EU via its digital freight platform – and the demand is great. This is shown by the reactions of shippers to the new possibility of requesting transports to Switzerland: Saloodo! has registered more than 16,000 transport requests for these relations within a few months.

Switzerland transports already a great success

Saloodo! customers also do not have to deal with the obligatory customs processes. Companies can either use their own customs service provider or rely entirely on Saloodo!’s cooperation partner when it comes to customs.

 “Saloodo! provides seamless cross-border and cross-market transport processing worldwide. Through our successful market entries in the Middle East, on the African continent and most recently in South America, we have gained a lot of experience with transports to customs-relevant countries, which we now benefit from. Now we are continuing our strategic growth in Europe by also offering Switzerland transports,” explains CEO Saloodo! Dr. Antje Huber. “Together with our cooperation partner Gerlach, the leading customs service provider in Europe, we can offer our customers fast and reliable customs clearance. We are thus continuing to work steadily towards our vision of a world in which logistics is smart, digitalised and sustainable.”

Uncomplicated customs clearance

Thanks to the cooperation with Gerlach Customs, shippers always have a competent expert at their side to support them throughout the entire customs procedure. The company was already founded in 1881 and thus has more than 140 years of experience in the field of customs clearance. With a network of 170 offices in 27 European countries and more than 1000 customs experts, Gerlach covers the entire spectrum of customs services. For CEO Gerlach Germany, Thomas Weins the cooperation is proof of the great customer orientation of both companies: “The advantages for customers are obvious: after they have expressed their customs requirements for the transport order on the Saloodo! platform, they can seamlessly continue the further customs-relevant steps with us. In this way, transports to Switzerland or from Switzerland to the EU are handled as simply and quickly as possible.”

One company that already regularly ships to Switzerland via Saloodo! and uses the service of Gerlach Customs is Flight13 Duplication from Pforzheim/Germany. The company offers duplication of CDs, DVDs as well as vinyl records and delivers to customers all over Europe. “We have of course delivered our goods to Switzerland before, but it has never been as easy as it is with Saloodo!. We place our transport order on the platform, choose the right carrier for us from the offers we receive and book the transport. Within a short time, we are then contacted by the Gerlach employees, who take care of the customs clearance. This is really very efficient and easy,” says Managing Director of Flight13 Duplication Björn Bieber.

With the integration of transports from/to Switzerland, Saloodo! once again proves its digital leadership and agile implementation of customer wishes. This customer-centricity is already experienced daily by more than 30,000 shippers and over 12,000 transport companies in more than 50 countries on 4 continents. Since Saloodo! was founded in 2016, the company has continuously expanded, also outside of Europe, into growth markets such as the Middle East, Africa and South America. Last year, Saloodo! launched the first unified global digital freight marketplace for road transport, enabling seamless cross-border and cross-market transport. Most recently, the logistics start-up launched its digital freight platform in Argentina as well as a “Closed Shop” feature that allows shippers to offer their transport orders only to a closed user group of pre-selected carriers, if desired.