NORTH WEST\\\


Cheshire is more associated with footballers’ wives and leafy suburbia than manufacturing but a surprising amount of high-end manufacturing goes on in behind its quiet country façade, says Neon Freight owner and founder, Ian Mallon: “It’s a bit under the radar, but there’s a raſt of high-tech ‘cottage industries’ here – it’s a real hot-bed.” Since setting up his new


forwarding company in the commuter town of Holmes Chapel 18 months ago, he has found no shortage of potential clients. For


Issue 2 2014 - Freight Business Journal Neon Freight: shining bright


example, Neon has been shipping parts for BAC Mono, which makes a very esoteric single-seat sports car – essentially, a road-legal racing car. The company started up in Holmes Chapel, although production of the kits that are shipped to California for final assembly has now moved to Speke near


Liverpool Airport.


And there are specialist chemical firms


and companies


spectrometers. From an operational point of


view, given the Cloud soſtware now available from companies


Good business in Manchester


The Manchester branch office of Hull-headquartered John Good Shipping is one of the company’s busiest, says manager Alan Steadman. It is responsible for all commercial and operational shipping activities within its region including all liner agency activities as well as a thriving multimodal import and export forwarding operation – in fact, the North-west comes second only to South-east England for John Good Shipping. The company has had a


presence in Manchester for over 40 years and is now the only liner and forwarding agent still located in the city centre. The main liner agencies are


the MACS Line service serving Namibia and Mozambique in southern Africa, the OPDR service serving Spain, Canary Islands,Portugal and Morocco and the ESL service serving Poland. Steadman comments: “All these


liner agencies are performing very well within the region with support mainly coming from the North-west forwarding sector who make an excellent and valued contribution to these services. Our freight forwarding activities continue to go from strength to strength with our three core markets, China ( Far East) Turkey and India also performing well with projections for 2014 looking very encouraging.”


Rhenus sees strength in exports


Things are looking up in the North- west, says managing director of Rhenus UK, David Williams – so much so that the German-owned company is considering moving to new-build premises in the city in the next couple of years. Business has picked up in the


Manchester region, in line with the rest of the UK, he says. “We’ve had a good start to 2014, with growth in exports and imports, but particularly strong on exports from the North-west where we’ve seen a 10% rise.” The region is playing to its traditional strengths in chemicals, textiles and general manufacturing, he says. Rhenus operates frequent direct


road trailer groupage services from the north of England direct


to destinations throughout Europe, plus Russia and Turkey. Some run daily, including services to Paris, Northern Italy, Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands, while most of the rest run once or twice-weekly. Most services go direct from the North of England - some routes are operated in conjunction with its office on the other side of the Pennines in Bradford. Rhenus’s other two main UK offices at Cannock and Basildon run their own, separate services. And unlike some competitors, services are not generally hubbed on the Continent. Rhenus has about 40 employees


in the North-west, including a handful in a small sales sub-office at Frodsham near Ellesmere Port.


making


such as CargoWise – Neon’s IT provider – you could of course base a forwarding company anywhere with a decent internet connection. But Ian Mallon puts great store on being able to visit his customers, so most of his clients are Cheshire and North- west based. “Freight forwarding is still a customer-service, people- orientated job – or at least it should be.”


ITAL goes global


Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain may have been saddled with the uncomplimentary ‘PIGS’ title by economists but they happen to be Manchester forwarder ITAL Logistics’ main markets – and they’re doing very well, says sales manager, Mike Whitney. So much so that ITAL has just taken on a new Spanish partner for the Valencia area – Moldtrans – to complement its


existing link-ups in Barcelona and Madrid. Italy, Greece and Portugal are


also doing nicely, Whitney adds. Dangerous goods are one of ITAL’s niche markets – it is one of the few operators prepared to jump the regulatory hoops to carry dangerous goods, and other forwarders often make use of its services. ITAL can offer forwarding


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services to other European trailer markets and it is also branching out into deep sea and airfreight forwarding. “A lot of our clients wanted to deal with just one company who could handle all their requirements, so we have employed experienced personnel in this sector to handle that side of the business too,” Mike Whitney explains.


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