Sustainability of outbound logistics in small businesses in Serbia

Abstract

A significant percentage of entrepreneurs, micro and small companies in Serbia do not have adequate outbound logistics capacities in order to register significant growth in business. The needs of everyday business and the demand for certain products and services is a reflection of the quality of products, and very often it is not realized in full potential, due to poorly dimensioned aspects of logistics function, or due to insufficient operational capacity of the company itself. The key problems of small companies from Serbia, which are trying to internationalize their products or services, lies in the fact that Serbia (as a country) generally has very poor outbound logistics and transport efficient solutions and capacities. In addition, transport costs and supply chain length have critical impact on the ability of a small company to meet demand outside the local market. The complexity of the problem is affected equally by internal capacities of micro and small companies, but also by weak external support for specialized outbound logistics services (transport, transshipment, etc.). These problems will be analyzed on a sample of small Serbian companies that deal with different fruit cultures processing, and are trying to conquer new markets. The result of the conducted research serves in an attempt of narrowing the problem to specific sectors of the industry, which are affected by inadequate logistics capacities. Future research could contain concrete measures to improve the delivery process and internationalization of goods for companies outside large systems (corporations), by defining concrete proposals to improve outbound logistics management capacities in Serbia.