AIRFREIGHT 2100 Inc., the licensee of Federal Express Corp. in the country, said it will spend more in the next three to five years to expand its operation and modernize its facilities, equipment, and on technologies that it use for its expanding operations.

Alberto D. Lina, the company’s board chairman, said they will spend between P350 million ($7.78 million) to P500 million ($11.11 million), mainly to improve existing facilities, building a new center, and buy more land.

Lina did not give details which areas in the Philippines’s 7,100 islands they would expand.

Still, he said they want to “put more focus” in the former American air base in Clark, Pampanga, north of Manila. Likewiese, Lina said they plan to expand current facilities in Parañaque, south of Manila and build more in the areas of Calabarzon or the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Aurora and Quezon, in Cebu and in Davao.

“Actually, we have already started by migrating our systems to SAP,” Lina said, referring to one of the networking products of the world’s second-largest business software company, Systems Applications and Products.

Lina said they had to replace its old software, which was homegrown, since it cannot handle huge volume of cargoes anymore.

“We have to keep in pace with the demand.”

Air21, which maintains a team at the Philippine Basketball Association, handles mostly electronic products and general cargo, Lina said.

The company was incorporated in June 1, 1979, mainly as a customs brokerage firm, serving mostly multinational and electronic companies. Air21 today has emerged as one of the top freight forwarding companies in the country, most especially after it became the sole licensee of Fedex in 1989.

Its services range from door-to-door delivery, to seafreight, trucking and warehousing.

Air21, however, and its sister firms are still on the expansion mode as it still trails behind its closest competitors such as LBC of the Aranetas and 2Go of the Aboitizes.

Lina said last week that it wants to expand the reach of Mail and More, an affiliate of Air21, as it only has 200 branches compared to that of LBC, which has a much wider business scope of more than 600 branches nationwide.

Having more branches complements the operation Air21 and Fedex as the facility the handles everything from bills payment to courier services, to money remittances.

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AIRFREIGHT 2100 Inc., the licensee of Federal Express Corp. in the country, said it will spend more in the next three to five years to expand its operation and modernize its facilities, equipment, and on technologies that it use for its expanding operations.

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