From an importer of lamb to a builder of warehouses, Banz has come a long way.

Over nearly 30 years that it has had a presence in Bahrain, the company has gained a high reputation for its expertise in building and operating warehouses. Banz has moved its expertise beyond Bahrain, and is set to play a greater role in the supply chain and logistics field regionally and internationally.
Banz, the acronym standing for Bahrain New Zealand, was established in 1978 as a joint venture between the governments of the two states to import lamb into the Middle East. The enterprise, a success for a number of years, was bought over by a group of local private investors in 1989. At the time it was the biggest cold store facility in the kingdom at 7,000 sq m.
Banz then ventured into a range of activities, including food production and dairy production, which were basically short lived. The next stage was diversification into industrial retailing and warehousing. Banz purchased Bhatia, which specialised in building warehouses and had agencies for international firms dealing in warehousing products. Banz began building warehouses on its own for their big local client, the US Navy, the first of which was a 24,000 sq m facility which is being used exclusively by that navy and has been adapted to suit the various needs of the customer with the changing situation.
“The company experienced good growth, which required it to expand its operations to include the building of warehouses for different customers, basically different divisions of the US Navy,” said Banz Group operations manager Mark A Clarke.  These facilities were set up in roughly the same area in the vicinity of Mina Salman.
In all, 11 warehouses were built as different customers had different requirements. Warehouse No 12, which has an area of 36,000 sq m and is 18 m high, was built 18 months ago. The serial number takes into account the original cold store when Banz provided Mina Salman with all of its refrigerated and chilled cargo requirements. Now, with over 90,000 sq m of specialised warehousing in Bahrain, Banz Group has grown into the premier warehousing company in the kingdom.
Most wanted air-conditioned warehouse space, but provision was also made for garages, paint shops and workshops, which were built into the buildings.  “These facilities are so large, one can bring in vehicles, maintain them and even store them. We may have the workshops, but we still have a lot to store,” says Clarke.  The stuff can be anything, even 12 m high signboards, hamburgers for Jasmi’s or water purification equipment for export. “We have 50,000 ready-to-eat meals as well as such things as chocolates, furniture, machinery, ships and patrol boats,” says Clarke. “Each warehouse is versatile and can store a variety of goods, the buildings having been designed for general-purpose use. A lot of these buildings were built specifically for a task, such as what the US Air Force needed. You have pallets that can move conveniently into an aircraft.” The pallets are roughly of 6 sq m, while a conventional warehouse pallet is a third of that size. 
Banz has built a special racking and storage system for such pallets in three of its warehouses. Special provision was made in the buildings’ foundation to bear the weight of the pallets. The lifts can bear a burden of 20 tonnes, and in the biggest facility, there are four lifts of that capacity.
One of the parties that have a presence at the warehouse is Dyncorp, which does maintenance work for the US Navy. While a majority of the warehouses are used by the US military, other customers find the facilities useful, particularly those who have launched new projects.   “When people start their own businesses and they import say a 40-ft container of frozen food and don’t know where to store it we offer space in one of our warehouses,” says Clarke. “We have about 30 customers that are small businesses.”
Meanwhile, the first cold store it built in 1978 was completely refurbished in 2000 with the entire refrigeration system replaced. The company spent $1.6 million on the project, introducing an eco-friendly ammonia-based refrigeration system, which at that time was the largest of its kind in Bahrain.
But as Bahrain is witnessing unprecedented development, the expansion and growth of  Banz is keeping step with the changes. With the BiADCO Warehousing operation at the airport, plans to build and develop at the new Sheikh Khalifa Port in Hidd and their potential expansion at the old port of Mina Salman, Banz continues to enlarge its logistical role in the kingdom. Competition too is growing, but the company says it has developed sufficient expertise to hold its own in its field.

Association with BMMI
Part of Banz’s business is the storing of beverages. This was done in the old cold store. The company has a bonded warehouse at the seaport and as it needed additional space it took the initiative of building a new facility. It decided to look at Mina Salman and move everything there. That was accomplished two years ago in an equal joint venture with Bahrain Maritime & Mercantile International (BMMI). Now beverages occupy approximately a half of the facility, the other half being used by other companies. The investment in the Mina Salman warehouse, which is a third-party logistics operation, was $8 million. 
BMMI has a number of projects in and outside Bahrain and they are the prime vendor for the US Navy. One of BMMI’s contracts is the Djibouti warehouse. “We decided that in Djibouti we will extend the B&B partnership and build a warehouse there,” said Clarke.  “We have the expertise to build warehouses and they have the contracts to supply materials. Here again it is a 50:50 partnership. The investment in the venture was $2 million. We’re looking to expand on that and negotiations are underway in Kuwait and Qatar with BMMI on building and operating warehouses.”
Clarke says the Bahrain venture with BMMI has been very successful. The warehouse is operating at 80 per cent of capacity with full capacity being 6,700 sq m.  B&B is negotiating with the port to take an additional plot as it expects to grow. The customers have to be bonded customers who will store without paying duty. B&B has its own customs people in the warehouse, an arrangement that will stay.
Operations at the Djibouti warehouse have gone on for some time, and recently it won a USAID contract.
“We have been very successful in Djibouti too,” enthuses Clarke. “We’re already getting a return on our investment there. When we built it, it was the only facility that had a cold store in the country.”
Business at B&B Bahrain is picking up. “Things moved slowly but now we’re in the black.  The venture operates, manages and does everything from Banz, while down in Djibouti BMMI does what we are doing here,” says Clarke.
In Djibouti too, B&B is looking to expand to Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia.

Help from Banz companies
Banz group company Bhatia designed and accomplished the installations in Warehouse No 6. The largest of the warehouses was done by Bemco, which specialises in air conditioning and electrical work. Bemco has a 10-man team on site continuously and its chairman is the same as the chairman of Banz.
For the warehouse at Mina Salman, built in a joint venture with BMMI, Bemco did the electrical installation and air conditioning, while Bhatia supplied the steel framework and the cladding. Bhatia has the agency for Butler building systems and they worked in most of the warehouses. They also did the racking system for the B&B warehouse using Shafer racking.