NORTH WEST\\\


Manchester at the centre of a world-wide web


The hub and spoke model has been used in many aspects of the freight industry like parcels and pallet but it can also work very well for seafreight consolidation – and what better place for a hub than the North-west, says CardinalMaritime.com managing director, Rick White. The NVOCC (non-vessel operating container carrier) arm of the Cardinal Maritime Group operates groupage seafreight containers to and from 500 destinations and origins from its hub at Sharston, not far from Manchester Airport. Cardinal first offered services to


the Mediterranean when it started – originally at a site in Eccles – about 15 years ago, and while this is still a strong region, it also runs services to West Africa and a range of southern African countries via Durban, plus South America and the Caribbean. It also has niche services to small islands like the Canaries – plus of course all the major destinations like China and Hong Kong. “We have a network of nine


receiving centres throughout the UK, but we load all our containers here in Manchester,” Rick White explains. “We have a huge client


base, all the way from Scotland to the south, so this is ideal.” Other consolidators operate differently, but White firmly believes that a single, central hub works best. Groupage can be an unpredictable business and NVOCCs that try and consolidate at different hubs oſten find themselves having to haul part loads up and down the motorways if there is a sudden surge of business in one location and an unexpected drop-off in traffic elsewhere. Cardinal Maritime has also got


its operation off to a fine art, a fact recognised by a Global Freight Award in 2011 and again in 2012. It acquired its present building two years ago and spent £250,000 refurbishing it to hold 150 people with all the creature comforts expected these days including a canteen – all under the watchful eye of company mascot The Captain - “The bastion of fair and transparent business practice,” White says. Having been started by


three local entrepreneurs, who contributed just £5,000 each, the Cardinal Maritime Group – which also includes freight forwarding, airfreight and project shipment


arms – now has an annual turnover of £55-60 million, although the plan is to increase this to £150m in the next few years, says Rick White. Although Cardinal is now a big business, it has worked hard to maintain the small family business feel, he believes. It is even to some extent


recession-proof. “Business is actually very good. There is more demand for LCL cargo as people can’t afford to hold stocks and they’re ordering in smaller quantities. We have in fact seen some of our best years during this recession.” Internet retailing, especially in smaller markets like Malta, have also helped drive the business forward. The company has


also


developed IT and soſtware to a very high level, Rick White adds. “For example, our freight calculator is the first online transparent price calculator which we have probably invested £300,000 in since we first developed it ten years ago,” White enthuses. It is designed to be as simple to use as possible – there is no need even to register. Commercial director Chris


Day also says that Cardinal is the only NVOCC to offer its customers


remote online printing of bills of lading (up till now only liner shipping lines have offered this). And around 40% of UK clients now book online, which greatly reduces the amount of re-keying of data that Cardinal Maritime has to do. The office is virtually paperless,


and this has the added benefit that around 8% of the workforce can work from home in some capacity, Rick White points out: “It’s meant that we have kept people who might, because of personal circumstances, have had to leave the business.” One aspect of the operation


that has not been automated is the actual building up of the container – although the company is working on a project. Pricing though is automated


and Cardinal operates a dynamic pricing model of the sort pioneered by the low-cost airlines. Thanks to the group’s buying-


power, Cardinal Maritime can also offer some very attractive FCL rates. “We move such large volumes that we can offer very good rates on FCL as well as LCL,” White points out. “You might think it’s cheaper to go direct to a shipping line, but it isn’t necessarily so.”


Norbert in the Northwest


In times gone by, the mills and factories of North-west England provided plenty of work for the region’s freight forwarders. Nowadays, though, says Philip Ludley, UK country manager at Norbert Dentressangle Overseas, “we don’t have so many local exporters


- our customers


come from all over the country. Manchester itself has developed much more of a service industry.” NDO’s Manchester


office is


important, however. While the Heathrow branch is building up, the Northwest office accounts for 40% of the business and functions as the company’s UK headquarters. It is central to the Group’s ambitions to build up its new freight forwarding arm to the point where it is equal to Norbert Dentressangle’s transport and logistics divisions; at present it accounts for just 3% of its €3.8 billion turnover. NDO is growing both organically


and through acquisition. Prior to Norbert Dentressangle’s purchase of TDG, the latter company took over Brisk Airfreight in Manchester, which provided a stepping stone for that company into forwarding. North-west exporters include


machinery and instrument makers, chemical firms and, in Kendall in the Lake District, specialist paper-maker James Cropper. For this company, NDO positions one of its trailers at the plant every day which is then filled with export traffic and brought back to its depot at Manchester Trafford Park, and exported by sea groupage or by air, or road. Trafford Park offers a much


more cost-effective location than the previous base at Manchester Airport – rentals are a mere £15 per sq ſt compared with £35 psf, says Phil Ludley. There is a good range of seafreight consolidation services


Phil Ludley: Manchester still has a thriving forwarding community


Issue 2 2013


19 Manchester


airport cargo area ready for take-off


With planning permission granted in October, site work for Manchester Airport’s World Logistics Hub should start in Spring and the first buildings will be ready for occupation next year, says John Atkins, Airport City director at Manchester Airport Group (MAG). “The development now has full outline planning consent and the land has been officially removed from the green belt,” he told FBJ in an interview in February. Meanwhile, MAG has been out


in the market to gauge interest in the project, Atkins explains: “We have interest from individual companies about taking space in the development but we’re also in the process of bringing on board a developer” - a process which he hopes will be complete by the end of April. The decision to appoint a


developer follows a change of strategy by MAG; a developer will bring in its own capital and help the airport group focus on what it does best – running airports. “Our objective is not necessarily to hold a lot of land assets – at the end of the day we’re an airport,” says Atkins. MAG sees cargo as strategic to


its operation. With the purchase of Stansted, the company, which already owns East Midlands as well as Manchester, will have three of the country’s biggest and arguably most freighter-friendly airports within its portfolio. “This is also an opportunity for airlines,” Atkins enthuses. While he is not expecting Manchester to supplant London Heathrow as the country’s primary airfreight hub, “there are limits to growth there”. There are other reasons why


available in the Manchester area. NDO has an agreement with Vanguard for LCL work that it doesn’t deal with itself, and there is also some good air capacity out of Manchester Airport. Customers are becoming


harder-nosed, though, and it can sometimes be more cost-effective to use consolidation services via Heathrow – that is, if they haven’t switched away from air to sea. Airfreight imports are nowhere


near the level of a few years ago – little more than a fiſth of their previous level. One other plus-point of the


North-west is the availability of


good, experienced freight


forwarding staff, says Ludley. To a much greater extent than other cities, “there us still a bit of a freight forwarding community here, at least as far as operational staff are concerned. But finding sales staff is a bit more of a problem.”


MAG has chosen to develop a dedicated cargo hub at Manchester, he adds. It will be arguably the country’s first ‘airport city’ solution of the type pioneered by Schiphol in the Netherlands and now being replicated, in different formats to suit local conditions, in airports around the world. Also, while Manchester as a


whole may not be a particularly constrained city by UK standards, in fact at there moment there isn’t much industrial land


available for development in the immediate area, Atkins points out. Roundthorpe is the closest industrial estate to the airport – around 3-4 miles away – but that is more or less fully developed and Trafford Park is eight miles distant. While there are some areas


available for redevelopment at the latter, “it’s nowhere near as open for redevelopment as it was 10-15 years ago”, says Atkins. At the same time, the World Logistics Hub will offer a modern area, tailor-made to the needs of the airfreight and high


value logistics industry,


inside the airport security area and with direct access to the M56 motorway. Moreover,


it benefits


from Enterprise Zone status with rates benefits, fast-track planning decisions and high-speed broadband. Nor will there be pressure from


other land uses like offices and conference centres, which has so inflated land values around Heathrow. The so-called ‘high value’ land uses at Manchester’s Airport City will be in a completely separate area to the north, which should eliminate encroachment on the new logistics area. Atkins accepts that for many the industry,


of the proof of


the pudding will be when real concrete is poured and buildings start to go up, but when progress starts in earnest, it will come rapidly, he insists. Manchester currently handles


around 107,415 tonnes of cargo a year, making it the fourth-busiest UK airport for freight behind London Heathrow, East Midlands and London Stansted. As well as a substantial amount of bellyhold cargo, scheduled freighter services are currently Cathay Pacific three times weekly to and from Hong Kong and Luſthansa three times weekly from Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and on to Frankfurt.


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