Introduction

Grindrod is situated in South Africa with subsidiaries, joint venture and associated
organizations in 24 nations around the world, utilizing in excess of 4 700 talented and
devoted individuals. It is perhaps one the biggest organization in South Africa as it is listed
on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). As it is a listed organization, the company's
vision is to make reasonable returns and long-haul value for its investors. To accomplish this,
the divisions must be committed to their work (Grindrod.n.d.).

Freight and Financial Services are the two divisions of Grindrod company of which it
specializes in to serve its customers. The freight services business units provide, locally and
internationally, operating and marketing synergies. In seeking after the system of turning into
a completely incorporated freight coordination’s specialist co-op, Grindrod keeps on putting
resources into resources and openings over its tasks with a spotlight on oil and gas, dry mass,
mass fluid wares, containerised load, and vehicles (Grindrod.n.d.).

The vision for the freight division is being a predominant and beneficial freight service
supplier that focuses in infrastructural improvement on the African mainland. Their
motivation is to be the best option supplier of a wide scope of freight coordination
administrations by incorporating the company's vital resources, logistics, infrastructure and
ship agency abilities fundamentally in the African continent. Grindrod have accomplished
this through their adaptability and advancement, with a guide of exceptionally talented
workers.

The Financial division's vision is to be an exceptionally productive investment bank around

the world. Their main goal is to use an all-around promoted accounting report with energy
and human acumen, to have a specialty focus to their product, to have a solid customer
establishment and to be deliberately agile to respond to the advancing scene.

Body

A value chain is a bunch of exercises that are performed by an organisation working in a

particular industry so as to convey a valuable product, for example, good and/or service, for
the market. The idea of the value chain is dependent on the process perspective on
associations, viewing a product or service association as a framework that is comprised of
subsystems each having inputs, processes and outputs. These three stage processes include to
obtain and utilize resources such as land, workers, capital, materials, equipment, and more.

Expenses and benefits are decided and influenced by the manner at which the value chain
exercises are completed. Inbound and outbound logistics, operations, sales and marketing,
and service are viewed as essential or primary exercises according to Porter's value chains.
Human resource management, procurement, infrastructure and technological development
makes up the secondary exercises. Items go through a chain of exercises all together, and at
every action the item’s value increases. The chain of exercises gives the items some extra
value added than the amount of values added of all exercises. Grindrod offers freight and
financial administrations to its clients.

Primary activities

The five primary exercises are viewed as basic in adding value and makes the position of
control.

Inbound logistics is when the materials, additionally completed stock and parts’ inbound
development is arranged from providers through assembling or gathering plants, stockrooms,
or retail locations (Wikipedia,2020). Freight Services division offers types of assistance for
the coordinated development of dry-mass, mass fluid, containerised load and vehicles along
explicit import/send out halls. Since freight is their point of business, their inbound logistics
deals with the arrangement of the movement of these cargos from suppliers to their storage in
the warehouse. For financial services, Grindrod must manage the inflow of cash from its
clients.

Operations are concerned about dealing with the process aimed at the conversion of inputs
such as labour and materials into products or services. Grindrod services are mainly through
roads, rail, port tasks, terminals, warehousing, stockpiling, stevedoring, ocean freight, ships
organization administrations, travel service administrations and all features of customary
logistics. The financial administrations' tasks manage overseeing speculations from
customers and dealing with their investor's cash. These exercises incorporate the
administration of cash deposits received from its customers (Grindrod, n.d.).
Outbound logistics are processes identified with warehousing and transportation of the
finished output and the information from the production line end to the consumer. Freight
tasks manage the capacity and observing payload to be dispatched to its destination, and the
actual movement from their terminals to the destination of the load. Upon delivery, data
about the load and the delivery streams back as feedback on their delivery (Tarver,2019). The
financial division of the organization needs to ensure that all withdrawals by bankers are
processed and all investments yield profits for their investors.

Marketing and sales deal with the selling of items and making, delivering, conveying
processes, and trading the contributions that clients, customers, accomplices, and society as a
whole, view as having value. Promotion and sales include procedures of upgrading
perceivability and targeting the right clients, for example, advancement, and valuing.
Fundamentally, all these exercises help in persuading customers in buying an organization's
item or service (Investopedia, 2019). Grindrod runs a site where it promotes the services they
offer, both from freight and financial divisions.

Service incorporates all the exercises that are in need to make sure the item is turning out
successfully for the purchaser after being sold and delivered.

Support activities

Utilizing support activities helps in making essential activities more compelling. Expanding
any backing exercise out of the four assists one or more primary activities to function extra
effectively. Bookkeeping, account, finance, advertising, and general management are part of
infrastructure exercises. Equipment, programming, methods and specialized information
brought to manage in the association's change of contributions to yields relates to
technological development.

All exercises that involve hiring, recruiting, preparing, paying, developing and, excusing or
retrenching work force makes up the human resource management. Generally, employee
management is helpful for all primary exercises, where workers and successful employing are
required for logistics, marketing, and operations, among others. Grindrod has utilized in
excess of 4 700 talented and committed individuals who will satisfy the organisation’s
strategy, as well as assist with designing, marketing, and selling the item. Procurement is the
securing of goods, works or services from the outside of the organisation. In this activity
organizations additionally make purchase decisions.

Grindrod uses common modes of transportation to move their shipments from one point to
another. These modes include road, rail and marine logistics. These modes, however, exclude
the use of delivery drones which has a great potential of minimising costs and creating value
for the customers. Delivery drones are used for a shorter distance delivery at a shorter period
of time.

South Africa is still a developing country, which means that there is still more to be
developed, and infrastructure is one of them. It has been challenging to make deliveries at
remote areas and at a short space of time due to traffic congestions, unpleasant weathers, and
many other challenges faced by the common modes of transportation, given the fact that
infrastructure is not yet fully developed is South Africa. This is where drone technology
come in play.

There are many advantages associated with the use of drone delivery positioning it as the
future of distribution. The first one is fast delivery; drones can fly in an orderly fashion to
their objective (McCollom,2017). Not at all like delivery trucks or cruiser messengers, they
don't need to explore stunning streets which might be blocked with traffic. This causes firms
to make snappy conveyances during difficult stretches when disagreeable conditions occur.

Delivery to inaccessible areas; drones are seen as ideal for delivery of medication and
medical care supplies to far off or lacking zones. These zones frequently experience the ill
effects of helpless foundation or harmed streets. Drones can make delivery to places that are
hard to reach by any normal method of transport. This encourages organizations to arrive at a
lot more clients which builds the organization's income (McCollom,2017).

Costs reduction: Automated drones fundamentally diminish the labour costs of package
delivery (McCollom,2017). Drone costs are essentially from maintenance of the drones and
the fuel they use, which is far less when contrasted with those related with different methods
of transportation. They are less labour intensive which eliminates labour cost and,
consequently, boost benefit.

Increased competitiveness: Companies offering fast deliveries with the use of drones will
have an indispensable edge on their rivals. It is a fact that people want their deliveries to be as
quick as possible, thus, only companies that are able to do so enjoy these benefits. This
increases competition amongst companies and pushes them to their best level.

Environmental friendliness: Drone deliveries have negligible ecological effect contrasted

with deliveries by rail, road or air. The use of transport has a huge effect on the environment
given the fact that transport is a significantly consume energy and it consumes the greater
part of the world's oil leading to contamination of air, including nitrous oxides and
particulates, and makes a critical contribution to unnatural weather changes and global
warming by releasing carbon dioxide (McCollom,2017). There is little or no carbon
emissions contributed by drones, this put them in a favourable spot as the reduction of carbon
emission is one of the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Drones can be utilized to ship therapeutic items, for example, blood items, immunizations,
and different supplies, for example, drugs and clinical examples. Medical deliveries have
become one of the main applications for drone delivery since they can effectively fly into and
out of distant or in any case blocked off locations, contrasted with trucks or cruisers. During
the nation lockdown, drones could have and still can assume a major function since
movement limitations were forced.

Travel restrictions make it difficult to transport goods using other modes of transport and
delivery drones are a solution to this problem, with most lockdown restrictions in its favour.
They avoid human contact as they are controlled remotely from a distance, this promotes
social distancing. Technology can be utilized to follow missing cargos, suspects on the run,
and in the location of criminal behaviour by law implementation, bringing about huge cost
savings.
References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_chain

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/050115/what-are-primary-activities-michael-
porters-value-chain.asp

http://www.grindrod.co.za/Pages/About-Us-Overview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivery_drone

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_transport#:~:text=The
%20environmental%20impact%20of%20transport%20is%20significant%20because,to
%20global%20warming%20through%20emission%20of%20carbon%20dioxide.

https://redstagfulfillment.com/drone-delivery-is-about-to-revolutionize-the-supply-chain-
industry/