Interview with Josep Perpinyà, Country Manager Tunisia

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of TransGlory we want you to get to know our teams better, how they ended up working in logistics and their thoughts on the future of the industry.

Today we want to introduce you to Josep Perpinyà, Country Manager in our office at Tunisia, who has been at TransGlory 21 years.

When did you start working at TransGlory? ¿Do you remember your first day?
I started working at Transglory on August 2000. I remember we were like a small family at that moment we probably were around 10 people. Another memory I have is that there werre a lot of dossiers and papers, I spent a lot of time with David Pros, who taught me to understand  margin analysis with lots of patience.

What made you end up working at logistics?
It was one of those coincidences, I think. I am a chemist by training and I worked in a chemical company but a technical position bored me. SEUR offered me a job in sales development and to open an agency in the South of France, I accepted and my adventurous spirit and people skills made me stay.

What do you like most about logistics? ¿And the least?
The opportunity it gives you to always be working with multicultural teams, meet lots of new people and learn from different sectors because of its transversality.  Those things are a great source of learning.
The negative part, maybe, is that it is a sector where you have to always be available and with a quite of pressure on your shoulders.

What is your best memory of you working at TransGlory or one of your favourite anecdote?
I have many great memories of the beginning, but perhaps what I miss the most are the Directors Meetings one weekend a year where we participated in different activities and workshops and built a stronger team.

Something particular you have learned in all this time?
How important are transport and logistics for the economy and how they affect the global supply chain. And of course, how much a pandemic can upset this supply chain around the continents.

How has the sector changed in the last 20 years? 
It has changed a lot. New technologies, communications, legislations (like the environmental ones) and security measures mean we have to adapt to a rapidly changing environment. That isn’t just a technological change, it also needs a change in mentality if you want to still be relevant and not disappear.

How do you think it will keep evolving?
I believe new technologies will have a big impact in our sector. IoT, BI, Blockchain, Deep Learning or VR will turn us, more and more, into companies with a technological base.

What do you think is the biggest challenge for the future of logistics? 
There are two main challenges: On the one hand a bigger professionalization of logistics, staff will have to be more prepared not only from a logistics perspective but also from a technological one as they will have to adapt to those changes, and on the other hand it will be challenging how to keep your clients and develop an excellent costumer experience in an environment where the relationship client-company is less and less personal.
As Darwin said: “it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment”.

What would you like to see in TransGlory’s future?
TransGlory is a business model and is a part of an important alliance. I’d like to see the WWA in the global top three and for TransGlory to be a leader on its markets.

How would you define the last 25 years in just 3 words?
Commitment, effort and learning.

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Thanks for reading!