Abdulla
Al Hashimi and Ibrahim Sharaf established Western Gulf Agency (WGA) in 1985 primarily
to coordinate the transshipment of containers from the Dubai and Jabal Ali ports
to Doha, Qatar. The partnership was established to start as Sub-Agents for
the US shipping lines. Although the US lines did not survive for long,
over the next two years we continued to work as Freight Forwarders handling mainly
Dubai - Doha bound shipments. In
1988 when the decision was made to separate from our Dubai partners and to operate
independently Mr. Ahmed Alem Al Hashimi took over the Managing Director post.
This decision to operate independently was taken to reduce and cut down on time-consuming
procedures and to speed up the decision making process at the Doha base.
As we continued to work with our Dubai associates we remained a representative
of their interest in the Doha market. We also purchased our first PC this
same year. In 1989 we signed
an agreement with a major Freight forwarder in Dubai to transship the LCL Doha
bound cargo, especially goods generated in Dubai. We
expanded our activities in 1990 by starting to book space for the air and sea
freight requirement of the " local market ". Consequently, we have strengthened
our ties with many forwarders in the business in North America, Europe and the
Far East. In 1990 we became the handling agents for Emery Worldwide. Since then
WGA has been witnessing a steady growth of 20% annually with this trend expected
to continue in the future.
In
1997 we re-engineered our forwarding processes and installed our own computer
based cargo handling system called "CHS 2000". This system keeps
track of all the shipments handled by WGA. All staff have access to the
information base and accounting is also connected. We take great pride in
our system and are planning to make it accessible through the Internet in the
future. Today
we represent major Freight Forwarders and Liners and have a vast network of "
associates " and business partners around the world. Our network of partners
extends around the Globe from North America to Australia. | 
