Philippe Somer, Senior Vice President, Industrial Projects, for Geodis Wilson talks about the division’s recent experience in the project cargo market. By George Lauriat, AJOT The last time AJOT interviewed Philippe Somers, Senior Vice President, Industrial Projects, for Geodis Wilson was at the 2009 ribbon cutting ceremony for the opening of their Houston warehouse/logistics facility. The state-of-the-art 65,000 sq./ft. logistics’ facility, located a couple of Texas sized football fields from George Bush Intercontinental Airport’s cargo zone opening attracted special attention. Somers, who is based in France, had flown out with a host of Geodis Group dignitaries, including Geodis group CEO Jean-Louis Demeulenaere, for the ribbon cutting ceremony. The high level turnout have seemed like a little exorbitant for opening just another logistics center but in truth the celebration was really a coming out party for the Industrial Project’s division of Geodis Wilson. Geodis Wilson, the Freight Forwarding/Freight Management arm of the Geodis Group (a wholly owned subsidiary of SNCF Group France’s rail company) has a number of units handling “vertical markets” such as Automotive, High Tech, Health/Pharmaceuticals, Consumer and Somers’ bailiwick, Industrial Projects. Overall, freight forwarding accounts for around 36% of the Geodis Group’s gross revenues (Euro 6.9 billion in 2011), the largest single activity of the group. Industrial Projects is a bit of a hodge-podge of things, and includes activities such as the relocation of a factory, power generation, construction and oil & gas projects - virtually anything oversized or out of gage. Although Geodis Wilson is based in Amsterdam, the Industrial Projects division is based in Houston, at the aforementioned facility. When Somers came aboard the Industrial Projects division in 2006, Geodis was just beginning to promote their “project” expertise. After the merger with TNT in 2006, the newly constituted company was named Geodis Wilson (Wilson was part of TNT). In 2008, GW acquired Rohde Liesenfeld, which added expertise in mining and other projects and expanded the division’s footprint to include Canada, South America, South Africa to the existing portfolio. According to Somers, the company already a strong foothold in North and West Africa and the Middle East, prior to the acquisition. Moving the division’s headquarters to Houston in 2009 was another major step in fortifying IP’s global presence – many consider Houston the “project freight capital” of the world and being there was important of a number of levels. When AJOT asked if the Houston operation [as division headquarters] has lived up to expectations, Somers emphatically responded, “Absolutely.” “We opened Houston, to be near the decision makers,” Somers said. Adding, “Certainly, Houston is a gateway for the oil & gas industry but “we’ve seen projects such as copper, gold and potassium mining projects besides the construction in the Gulf [of Mexico].” The group also does ancillary packing and consolidation out of Houston to support these projects and the regional Geodis Wilson group. Somers says “hopefully” some the project will heat up in the near term. He cites opportunities in diverse locations like Canada, Eastern Europe, Korea, Africa, Vietnam, Russia and Middle East, as examples of business already underway or that could happen the near term. “Brazil is a good project market,” Somers noted, as the country has “oil and gas [development], the Olympics [2016], World Cup [2014-FIFA] and Confederation Cup [2013-FIFA]…there is such a need for rail and roads and power is a big issue.” He also pointed out in regards to the wind generation market, the current slowdown is not expected to last very long as there are still a large number of wind projects in development that could come on stream in the near future. Harald Kolp, Vice President, IP mentioned that he thought the countries like Libya in North Africa had huge potential for the project cargo market as rebuilding th