Ms Nompumelelo Mboweni works as an Airfreight Import Controller at Bidvest Panalpina Logistics in Johannesburg [TT Club]

The 2014 Young International Freight Forwarder of the Year (YIFFY) Award has been presented to South African forwarder Fortunate Nompumelelo Mboweni at the FIATA Annual Congress in Istanbul.

Each year at the FIATA Annual Congress the achievements of young freight forwarders from around the world are celebrated via an awards programme. TT Club is proud to have sponsored this award, now in its sixteenth year, since its foundation. The process of awarding the honour of Young Freight Forwarder of the Year (YIFFY) began earlier this year when entrants from all over the world submitted papers about a wide variety of transport and logistics projects.

These ranged from the transportation of tunnel drilling equipment to Bolivia to the delivery of a catamaran in Indonesia and from a project moving radioactive isotopes from South Africa to Namibia to the expedited deployment of a Disaster Assistance Response Team in the Philippines.

From this bewildering, yet highly professional array, the YIFFY Steering Committee selected a shortlist of four regional finalists. These four young professionals were then invited to attend the 2014 FIATA World Congress this week in Istanbul, Turkey to make a presentation on their dissertation topic.

The four regional finalists who proudly represented the future of the international freight forwarding industry in Istanbul were –

Africa/Middle East: Miss Fortunate Nompumelelo Mboweni, South Africa
Americas: Mr Douglas Whitlock, Canada
Asia-Pacific: Mr Saiful Ridhwan Bin Zulkifli, Singapore
Europe: Mr Christian Hensen, Germany

Following a comprehensive judging process, Ms Fortunate Nompumelelo Mboweni from South Africa was announced as the 2014 Young Freight Forwarder of the Year at the FIATA Congress’ opening ceremony on 13 October. Ms Nompumelelo Mboweni works as an Airfreight Import Controller at Bidvest Panalpina Logistics in Johannesburg. Andrew Kemp, TT Club’s Regional Director for Europe congratulated her and presented the award.

“I have been honoured as TT Club’s representative to be part of the selection process, and I personally was engrossed by the finalists’ presentations, which showed a considerable depth of understanding of their individual projects. I have to say all four finalists performed with flying colours at the recent final presentations; it was certainly a difficult decision to pick an overall winner. However, Fortunate prevailed and deservedly takes this year’s award,” said Kemp.

The award is presented in recognition of forwarding excellence and was established by FIATA with the support of TT Club to encourage the development of quality training in the industry and to reward young talent with additional valuable training opportunities. The TT Club has been a sponsor of the award since its inception and remains firmly committed to the importance of individual training and development within the global freight forwarding community. Source: TT Club