Case study · 04

Restoring Margin at a Port Adjacent Logistics Operator

Kingswell Strategy rebuilt cost to serve and tiered pricing to recover margin at a port-adjacent logistics operator without losing volume.

Sector: Port-adjacent logistics and warehousing
Engagement: Margin and pricing transformation

Several pointsMargin recovery within a year

2Loss-making mega accounts turned profitable

ApprovedDeferred expansion approved the following quarter

01 The Problem

The operating constraint behind the numbers

A warehousing and logistics operator serving port traffic had watched margins erode for three consecutive years while volumes grew. Every customer received the same service regardless of what they paid, and nobody in the business could say which accounts made money.

02 The Evidence

The evidence leadership could act on

Two Loss-Making Mega Accounts After Repricing

Before repricing

Loss-making

After repricing

Profitable

Source: two loss making mega accounts became profitable through repricing rather than exit

03 The Kingswell Response

What changed in the management system

Build customer-level cost to serve

Cost to serve was built at customer level for the first time in the company's history, drawing on operational data the business already held but had never connected.

Restructure the service catalogue into tiers

The service catalogue was restructured into three explicit tiers with matching prices.

Renegotiate the bottom quartile of contracts

The bottom quartile of contracts was renegotiated.

Redesign yard operations around real bottlenecks

Yard operations were redesigned around the two genuine bottlenecks the analysis exposed, supported by a live yard visibility dashboard.

04 What Remained

The management system installed

Live yard visibility dashboard

Customer-level cost-to-serve model

Three-tier service catalogue with matching prices

05 The Result

What the organisation could do next

Cost to serve was built at customer level for the first time in the company's history, drawing on operational data the business already held but had never connected. The service catalogue was restructured into three explicit tiers with matching prices, the bottom quartile of contracts was renegotiated, and yard operations were redesigned around the two genuine bottlenecks the analysis exposed, supported by a live yard visibility dashboard. Margin recovered by several points within a year without volume loss, two loss making mega accounts became profitable through repricing rather than exit, and the deferred expansion was approved the following quarter.