MOBILITAS again demonstrated on Friday 25 March 2022 that Côte d’Ivoire is a testing ground for the group. Vice-Chairman Paul Massardier inaugurated new state-of-the-art facilities in Yaou, in the presence of the town’s first deputy mayor, Sylvestre Toppé.
Located some sixty kilometres from Abidjan, the logistics centre is constructed on an 18,000 m² plot of land acquired by MOBILITAS in 2019. It consists of offices and workspaces for local teams as well as three depots adapted to the group’s core activities: 1,000 m³ are dedicated to removals, 2,000 m² to records management and 3,600 m² to storage facilities. And that’s not all: the new site comes with a 5,000 m² outdoor parking area for shipping containers and trucks and operations and can be expanded onto a 6,000 m² adjacent plot of land if required.
Technology at the service of customers
To serve the best interests of clients, the premises has been designed to be on the cutting edge of technology. The removals division, the historical activity of AGS Côte d’Ivoire, uses specific packaging material appropriate for the protection of its clients’ personal effects, with 35 different products, for example.
The records management division has a storage capacity of nearly one million boxes. Fully racked and equipped storage facilities allow for the secure and confidential management of client data, separate sorting and digitisation rooms optimise the digitisation of client documents, and secure document destruction solutions have also been incorporated. Additionally, the site is ISO 9001 certified, which guarantees the control of business processes and infrastructure security.
Finally, the warehousing division provides AGS clients with a modular space of between 1000 and 3000 m² as well as handling, management and remote-control services for client stocks and flows.
Côte d’Ivoire, the cornerstone of AGS in Africa
In total, 63 employees and more than 20 physical and digital records management trainees work on the new site. For Country Manager Guillaume Dehem, “the exceptional investment that the group has made in Côte d’Ivoire is a continuation of what we have learnt here over the past 30 years”. “The new facilities appear to be the “largest company in the region,” underlined Sylvestre Toppé, representative of the mayor of Yaou. “We are very moved because we never thought that in our commune, and particularly in Yaou, we would celebrate such a great achievement.”
Since 1993, AGS Côte d’Ivoire has been the group’s incubator for the entire African continent. “The country has been, and remains, the base, the foundation on which the group has relied to innovate and develop in all African countries. It has taught us everything,” assured Paul Massardier in his inaugural speech. “We have applied what we have learned here to the whole of the continent.”
Looking to the future with the heritage division
The group’s vice president quoted President Felix Houphouët Boigny: “A miracle, like a gamble, is prepared, planned, measured, decided upon and achieved through willpower and perseverance,” to compare the evolution of the country with that of the AGS Group in Côte d’Ivoire.
With a turnover exceeding 2 billion FCFA in 2021, it is evident that many clients from various sectors (banking, insurance, industry, services, public administration, etc.) have placed their trust in AGS Côte d’Ivoire. In total, the branch has stored more than 200,000 boxes of archives and scanned more than 3 million pages for all its clients.
And AGS Côte d’Ivoire does not intend to stop there. The branch is already positioning itself for the future with the development of the heritage division, which is designed to provide solutions for the preservation and enhancement of heritage.
To take advantage of the state of the art removals, storage and records management service offered by AGS Côte d’Ivoire, contact Country Manager Guillaume Dehem at guillaume.dehem@ags-globalsolutions.com.