SkanTrans-PSL Norway is born 32


The PSL Group has opened its first SkanTrans-PSL facility in Scandinavia,


in in Norway. The


terminal is located in Frederikstad, south-east of Oslo, to enable a quicker discharge of trailers as well as being close to the customs crossing point at Svinesund. There is a second depot in Oslo itself. In addition to the full load,


part load, groupage and express services that SkanTrans-PSL currently offers, SkanTrans A/S will also provide customs clearance,


warehousing,


fulfilment and e-commerce solutions. PSL Group managing director,


John King, said: “We are excited that


this SkanTrans branded


development will provide additional high-quality services for our loyal customer base – and further


enhance the Group’s


innovative reputation.” SkanTrans-PSL was founded in


1989 by a consortium including UK-based PSL Group and four Nordic Partners – Conroute


Sweden, Modul (Denmark), Transport Itella A/S (Norway)


and Varova (Finland) to serve the Nordic/UK routes. Now, though, Itella has pulled out of the arrangement as part of a wider reorganisation of its freight and logistics activities (see separate piece on p34). The Norwegian company, SkanTrans A/S is a joint venture between SkanTrans- PSL Ltd, Skantrans Ireland and old-established Norwegian forwarding group, Andersen & Morck. With the new arrangements


in place, SkanTrans-PSL will be able to focus again on providing excellent customer service, says director Jason Mutton. “In fact, we have employed back a lot of the people that worked for Itella,” he told FBJ. SkanTrans-PSL runs dedicated


daily express services to Norway using the road route via Denmark, offering delivery in 48 hours – effectively as fast as airfreight. Goods collected by 2pm on


Monday can be delivered as early as 7am the day aſter, and in fact 48 hours is a ‘worst case’ scenario for populated parts of Norway. Much of SkansTrans-PSL’s


business comes from the book trade, where personal service is paramount, says Mutton. “Books are our specialist area, although we are also a general groupage carrier, for goods such as machinery or clothing” he explains. For Norway, SkanTrans-PSL


offers a service whereby books are processed before the UK – almost all of those carried are English language and the majority are academic textbooks for university students. Fiction doesn’t figure too much, as most books that are read for pleasure are in Norwegian or Swedish, even in Scandinavia where English is widely spoken. The one exception is when a new ‘blockbuster’ like the latest Harry Potter book comes out – then, people are so anxious to be the first to get their hands on it that they are prepared to read it in English.


“When the last Harry Potter came out, we had 188 pallets of it in the warehouse,” Mutton recalls. Sales of fiction books have fallen


in any case thanks to the rise of the Kindle and similar electronic books. But academic textbooks are relatively immune, Mutton believes. You can’t have five books open simultaneously on an e-reader, nor can you scribble notes in the margin. Boxes of books received from


the publisher are opened, checked and then repacked either for delivery to book stores or direct to the reader via the postal system. A similar service operates to Sweden and between them the two countries account for around 800,000 volumes a year. “The client gains efficiency and


cost saving,” Mutton explains. Booksellers in Scandinavia


are in direct competition with online retailers like Amazon. Although the latter has yet to gain a significant foothold in the region, the traditional independent book


trade wants to pre-empt it by offering a superior service. “Our customers want that extra bit of personal service. We ask then what they want to achieve and then we look at how we can do it – it’s all tailor-made.” At the moment there are four


different clients using the book delivery service and more are anticipated. Mutton adds that there is no reason why the concept couldn’t be used, not just for books, but any goods where delivery of small numbers of specific items to the end-user is required – CDs, soſtware or computer parts for example. The direct book delivery


service is not yet being offered in Denmark, but it could well be in future, says Mutton. “We want to expand the service in a measured way, bringing in one new customer say, every six months. We would rather expand it slowly and correctly than rush things – in the book industry, it’s all about your reputation, both at a corporate and


is


Issue 8 2014 - Freight Business Journal


///SCANDINAVIA


a personal level, and they all talk to each other at book fairs – so if you get it wrong, word gets around very quickly.” There are no current plans to


offer the book service to Finland either, although Skan-Trans-PSL does have a regular groupage service. The road express option would take 72 hours, which is a little long compared with airfreight. Iceland rarely figures; there the occasional consignment


moved by road to Denmark and then by air. At the company’s headquarters


in Maldon, Essex, the policy is to recruit local staff where possible and, in particular, to give jobs to people currently out of work. Mutton explains: “We have a wide age spectrum, from 16 to 56, which helps. The job isn’t necessarily physically demanding,


but it


does require good levels of concentration, and we find that having a mix of youngsters and older people works well.”


Enlarged Aeroship’s ready for take-off


UK-Scandinavia specialist Aeroship has moved its London operation to a new warehouse in Basildon to cope with growing volumes of business, says managing director Jesper Thygesen.


Historically, the


company has always had a presence in the Thurrock and Tilbury areas but it was becoming increasingly difficult to handle the volumes of trade, prompting a move to a purpose-built facility. The new Basildon site also


handles Aeroship’s Greek traffic as well as traffic for the Palletforce UK pallet network, for which Aeroship is the Scandinavian link. A few weeks previously,


Aeroship’s parent company, Danish-based Leman International System Transport, acquired the share of Dan Cargo, along with its subsidiaries in Gothenburg (Sweden) and Oslo (Norway). Dan Cargo already had substantial volume in and out if the UK, so Aeroship has merged the two activities together based on its depots at Basildon, Bradford and Cannock, along with consolidation points in Denny in Scotland and


Bristol. Dan Cargo itself had no UK deports of its own. (There is, incidentally, another,


separate operator called Leman UK, but this has now been rebranded as Ziegler.) “Business


to and from


Scandinavia is good,” continues Thygesen. “We’re moving 550 trailers a month back and forth across the North Sea.” Membership of Palletforce also led to a rethink of


the


Scandinavian, Norwegian and Finnish routes. “Traditionally, we’d always operated Tuesday and Friday groupage departures, which is something of a tradition in the Scandinavian markets, as that is when the direct ferry services ran. However, as we are picking up daily for Palletforce, we decided to offer a daily service via Denmark.” The latter country’s port of Esbjerg has daily ferries from the UK. Although not quite as quick as the direct sailing, the daily departure via Denmark still offers useful time- savings for cargo needing to move on other days of the week. Norway is a growing market, says Thygesen, although it is


largely one-way out of the UK. “It’s mostly groupage – commodities like chemicals – with very little full load traffic.” Business is centred on Leman’s Oslo depot, from where local partner Collicare services the rest of the country. Finland similarly can be served


via Copenhagen, although again there is a direct Finnlines sailing on Fridays from Hull to Helsinki, which scoops up a lot of the traffic. “It’s a stable market, and again for us it’s mostly groupage and one-way,” Thygesen states. Around 90% of the business is to the Helsinki area, where Leman has an office, but the rest of the country is also covered. In the UK, Aeroship’s head office


is in Bradford. The latter also has a thriving business to and from the US. Leman’s involvement in North America is partly historic – Scandinavian and particularly Danish furniture has always been popular with well-heeled Americans and the business grew from there. It is also growing the business through acquisition and is on the lookout in particular for UK-based forwarders with a strong presence in overseas markets.


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