Healthy in South America
The Bomi Group remains very active in Brazil and Ecuador.
The Bomi Group, which specialises in healthcare logistics, already set up operations in South America after its first ten years in business. In August the company from Cremona, in the Italian province of Lombardy, further fortified its presence in two countries there.
The Bomi Group was founded in the tranquil commune of Spino d’Adda, located approximately 20 km east of Milan, in 1985. Soon after it was established it already started expanding its reach beyond Italy. It set up its first non-Italian branches all over Europe – in Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and also in Luxembourg.
These developments were soon followed by a move into Latin America in the mid-1990s. Joint ventures were formed with local partners in 1996 and 1997, ini-tially in Mexico and Brazil. In 2008 the Bomi Group, whose logistics services revolve almost exclusively around healthcare products, stated that it was making South America its main market.
In spring 2021 the corporation further fortified the executive management team running its Brazilian subsidiary by bringing in Marcelo Borges as its new operations director, Priscila Saiki as the head of its business development efforts and Camila Zandonai as the new head of its domestic customer services (see also ITJ Daily of 17 May 2021).
In October then the acquisition of Line Express and ALX (Linex) improved Bomi’s air and road transport portfolio for pharmaceutical goods in the region’s most populous country. Linex, from Barueri, on the western edge of the city of São Paulo, operates six warehouses, all strategically located across the country. It was founded in 2004 by the Silva family, which remains operationally active.
Marco Ruini, founder and CEO of the Bomi Group, called Linex a “key firm in the Brazilian transport market”, adding that “we’re continuing to expand to meet increasing demand for our services, and to maintain our quality standards for the benefit of patients.”
A physical and a digital presence
The Bomi Group has simultaneously also expanded its presence in Ecuador. This was preceded by an audit carried out by the government’s health surveillance authority at Bomi’s Guayaquil site.
The number of certified vehicles there was subsequently increased by eleven and the number of certified containers by four. “We’re continuing to expand and certify our fleet to meet our customers’ ever-growing logistics requirements,” said Liliana López, the firm’s chief technical officer in Ecuador.
The Bomi Group is evolving successfully in every field, as is evidenced by ten digital kiosks at four warehouses in Brazil that went live in October, as part of a pilot project. The self-service devices will add intelligent e-learning and interactive communications to the firm’s warehousing operations.