Pablo Martínez, CEO of OnBoard Logistics, featured in Forbes Uruguay

Thank you, Forbes Uruguay, for this feature and for this great interview, which lets us get to know Pablo Martínez, our CEO, a proudly Uruguayan leader 🇺🇾, a little better.

Speaking with Andrés Oyhenard for Forbes Uruguay BrandVoice, Pablo talked about growth, leadership and expansion, and about how a Latin American company can compete on equal terms with multinationals.

From Urucargo to a regional player

More than three decades ago, Pablo started out as an entrepreneur in Uruguay with a small logistics company: “We started in Uruguay in 1990 with a company called Urucargo.” Today he leads OnBoard Logistics, headquartered in Miami, with a presence in 15 countries, 31 offices and more than 400 people.

Why Miami? “Because it is the great hub of Latin America. Multinationals have their headquarters there and practically all of the region’s cargo passes through it.”

The operation in numbers

• Nearly one and a half million kilos a month by air, one million of which leave from Miami
• Around 50,000 TEU a year by ocean, from different origins
• Eight warehouses in strategic locations such as Panama and Miami

As flexible as a small company, with the standards of a large one

The idea behind OnBoard was to be “flexible enough, like a small company, but with the standards, the regulation and the negotiating power of a large one.” That space in the market made double-digit growth possible every year.

The result, Pablo explains, is long-term relationships: “Clients become partners. A company that works with us in Chile later hands us its operation in Peru or in Colombia.”

People, culture and new markets

For Pablo, everything starts with talent: “Each country director is the key to that operation’s success.” In the interview he also spoke about OnBoard’s arrival in Venezuela, its study of the Argentine market on the back of mining, and the place sustainability holds in the company’s strategy.

Quotes translated from the original Spanish. Photo: Nicolás Garrido for Forbes Uruguay.