EFL Global this year celebrates its 40th anniversary in the freight forwarding and 3PL business. The global logistics provider is looking back on its four decades of defying boundaries and turning its outlook toward its goals for the future.
What is now a global leader in the supply chain, EFL has humble origins. The company began with one man, Hanif Yusoof, who founded Expolanka Freight in 1982 as an agency for freight forwarders in the Indian Subcontinent.
The company began in a 300-square-foot office in Colombo, Sri Lanka, with a five-man team, but quickly expanded to become a global presence just 10 years later. Since then, the company has continued to experience rapid growth.
Expolanka Holdings, EFL Global’s parent company, became a publicly traded company in 2011. Then, in 2012, Expolanka Freight rebranded to “EFL” and soon became part of SG Holdings Group, one of Japan’s largest logistics conglomerates.
Twenty million shipments since its start, EFL is now an international company with more than 70 offices in 34 countries and a team of over 3,000 industry professionals. It is supporting the supply chain across critical sectors including fashion and apparel, pharmaceuticals, technology, automotive, machinery, equipment, and aid and relief.
Despite the challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, EFL has seen paramount growth over the past five years in particular.
“The company has grown tremendously in the last five years. We’ve gone from being a $400 million company to over $3 billion globally,” said Evan Rosen, president of the Americas region at EFL Global.
The company continued to expand its offerings beyond freight forwarding over the years. Its 3PL solutions today include global freeport operations, warehouses and distribution centers with cutting-edge technology across the globe. EFL’s services are linked through its digital solutions, offering purchase order management, supply chain solutions, track and trace, a customer portal, and visibility for product monitoring.
EFL’s evolution has been helmed by the same leader who founded the company four decades ago. Yusoof, still the founder and president to this day, as well as executive director and group-CEO of Expolanka Holdings PLC, is a hands-on leader who has shaped the company’s success through his direct leadership approach and an entrepreneurial mindset that is still embedded in the company’s culture.
“Hanif Yusoof is an entrepreneur through and through. He treats people with respect and this is very much a family-driven company. I don’t think you’ll find another $3 billion global company that’s run more like a family business than EFL Global. … I can say that’s something special,” Rosen said.
EFL places a huge emphasis on its core values, and it lives and breathes its ideals through its interactions with customers and the environment.
There are countless freight forwarders in the market that shippers can use to move products. EFL’s approach, however, is about trust and delivering.
“The best way to build loyal relationships and deep relationships with your customers is to deliver on exactly what you sold,” Rosen said. “Continue to invest in the relationship by strategically building out products and services that your customers are telling you are their pain points so that you can continue to deliver value for them.”
Moving forward, Rosen sees diversification and evolving strategically with customers to be key for the company’s continued growth.
“Being able to provide additional products and services around the airfreight and ocean freight, both domestically and internationally, to gain more revenue streams from our existing account base as well as adding new customers is the way of the future for us,” Rosen said.
With a goal of leaving a positive impact, the company places a large focus on sustainability initiatives.
It is not a secret that the logistics and transportation industry contributes to carbon emissions. That is why EFL is striving to be the leading sustainable organization within the supply chain, according to its sustainability commitment. It aims to maximize economic and social gains while also reducing environmental consequences.
In 2019, the company founded its Global Goodness program, an initiative to align its business approaches with the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals to do its part to make positive changes in the industry and for the world.
EFL has also committed to the Science Based Targets initiative, a global project that provides a framework for corporations to reduce their carbon footprint in line with the Paris Agreement goals. EFL is among 2,000 other major international logistics companies striving to make sustainable change.
EFL continues to embrace the challenges of the present and the future by living Yusoof’s commitment to “to do good to the world.”
Visit EFL Global’s website to learn more about its freight forwarding and 3PL solutions.
