Gulf Warehousing Company (GWC) will expand services to cover the oil and gas sector and hazardous goods when its new warehouse at Ras Laffan Industrial City becomes operational in February 2008.

The company, which already conducts successful operations at its flagship warehouse in Doha, also plans to open another one in Mesaieed and build a logistics village in Al Wukhair.
Discussing the Ras Laffan facility,  GWC general manager and CEO James Walsh said the 16,000 sq m facility created specifically for the oil and gas sector  would have the capability of storing 30,000 pallet positions with a bulk area provision for heavy equipment up to 75 tonnes.
Walsh said the Mesaieed warehouse would have an area of 16,000 sq m and was expected to begin functioning around July-August 2008. He added that the number of pallet positions had yet to be determined.
The official said the 1 million sq m logistics village would transform Qatar’s logistics industry. “It will offer pick and pack warehousing, documents storage, bulk storage, detergent storage, multi-purpose and dedicated turnkey warehouses, truck parking, car storage, a maintenance area, labour housing and a container yard among other opportunities which are currently being finalised,” he said.
The company recently announced that the Qatari cabinet had approved a grant of QR500 million ($137.4 million) for constructing the first phase of the logistics village. The cabinet also passed a resolution entrusting GWC with the warehousing and storage of materials belonging to its ministries and government institutions.
Gulf Consolidated Contractors was awarded a contract to undertake a part of the first phase which will be completed at the end of 2008.
Gulf Warehousing Company was formed in March 2004 as a public company listed on the Doha Securities Market. It entered the storage market in mid-2006 with its 25,000 sq m flagship warehouse at the Doha Industrial Area.  With some 43,000 pallet locations, it offers storage in ambient, frozen, chilled and temperature-controlled environments.
A warehouse manage-ment system enables full visibility to customers from receipt to dispatch, Walsh said.
GWC recently upgraded capability there with state-of-the-art vertical storage units which offer benefits to clients seeking ‘pick and pack operations.’ Working alongside the pallet racking system, six new 12 m high ‘Tornado’ units enable GWC to offer its clients a service that is the first of its kind in the country, Walsh said.
The Doha warehouse deals with food and beverages, electronics, consumer goods including the fast moving ones, furniture and home decor products, various artefacts and materials related to the oil and gas sector.
It does not have the capability to store hazardous goods, a shortcoming that will be remedied by the soon-to-be-opened facility at Ras Laffan.
As well as warehousing, it offers transportation, freight forwarding, customs clearance, supply chain outsourcing, open container yard storage and transport and end-to-end transportation solutions
Walsh cited a range of value-added services that the Doha warehouse provided. These include pick and pack, repacking, recartoning, kitting and assembly, repalletisation, stretch wrapping, shrink wrapping, pallet equipment rental, cross docking and labour outsourcing. Other services the company lists are asset management, documents disposal, embedding, transloading and transshipment, ERP system interfacing, customised inventory reports and vendor management inventory.
“The companies will tailor-make service offerings to suit customers’ requirements,” Walsh said.
He said utilisation capacity was more than 74 per cent in late October and expected to reach 90 per cent by year’s end along with 95 per cent fleet utilisation. The aim, he said, was to present to customers a one-stop shop.
The company made a profit of QR690,000 in the first nine months of this year against a loss of QR1.39 million in the year-ago period. Net profit for 2006 was QR587,100, down 95 per cent.