34 top five


Issue 7 2015 - Freight Business Journal Ace plays the French card


Freight forwarder and pallet distributor Ace Express is running twice-weekly trailers to Paris and Strasbourg aſter signing up with Heppner as its French road transport partner. Heppner is a major player in France with a turnover of €600 million and Mark Tracey, commercial director for Ace, says the service is likely to expand this autumn. France is already one of Ireland’s trading


partners and


“could be as big as Germany in the next few years,” he says. Irish customers of Ace are exporting a range of products there, including automotive parts, sanitary fittings, medical devices and machinery. Underlining Ireland’s logistics


efficiency, Ace brings in plastic granules from suppliers in Germany and the Netherlands for a plastics processor in Athlone and ships extruded products back out to Europe, the firm successfully competing against mainland European rivals. Ace, based at Lusk to the


north of Dublin, has had a ten- year relationship with Hellmann Worldwide Logistics that allows it to offer global sea and airfreight services as well as road transport across Europe. The company currently operates 30 trailers per


week to Europe, thanks to partners in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic and Scandinavia as well as France, most of these members of the ‘Hellmann family’. The links are mutually beneficial,


Tracey explains. “What you look for in a partner is someone who is prepared to do for you what you’d do for them – bail you out on a Sunday morning if you’ve got a problem,” he says. “We’re a small piece of the jigsaw [to a large European operator] and in the majority of cases we give out more than we get. But although Ireland might be a small niche market, there are limited opportunities to find a good local partner here because of the strong presence of the multinationals.” Ace has ambitions to double in


size over the next five years and saw turnover increase by 8-9% in the first half of this year. Tracey remembers precisely when Ireland could say with conviction that it was through the recession. “The tide turned in September 2014. We saw strong double-digit growth, taking us back to 2007 revenue levels. “The difference is that, although


prices have hardened recently, “we’re doing twice the work for it,”


Philip Tracey, MD of Ace Express, with Deloitte’s Kevin Sheehan at the Best Managed Companies Awards 2015.


he says. “While the strong have got stronger, there have been casualties among smaller forwarders who didn’t have a niche”. On three occasions Ace began


legal discussions to acquire small family-owned concerns, but each deal broke down, Tracey says. “They weren’t bad guys, but were charging 30-40% below market rate, not enough for what they were doing. “In one case we were paying the


diesel for a company with 60-plus employees while we spent 12 hours in a solicitor’s office trying to agree terms with them. Their customers wanted continuity and were keen for us to be involved, as were their bankers. But something just


felt


wrong.” It turned out a director was trying


to set up a ‘phoenix’ company while negotiating with Ace. The firm didn’t survive, and neither did the other two that had been more honest in their efforts to find salvation. Ace does, to a degree, subsidise


Mark Tracey says Ace aims to double in size over the next five years.


some of the rural members of its Irish pallet distribution network. It depends on local hauliers “if there’s an urgent shipment from Munich to the west of Ireland,” Tracey says, but he points out that less freight comes out of the regions. “There’s an imbalance, but it’s more stable now.”


The same is true of movements


between Ireland, the UK and Europe (Ace is part of the Pall-Ex network and averages ten trailers per night across the Irish Sea). “The ratio into and out of Ireland has been almost equal since the crisis,” Tracey says. “We have a little more coming in than going out if you include deep sea imports from the Far East, but before the recession it was one trailer out, three back.” Ace has 8,000sq metres of


warehousing at Lusk, combining cross-dock, pick-and-pack and a bonded air freight facility. Around 5km away at what was planned as Ireland’s biggest business park - which never got off the ground thanks to the downturn in the economy - the company has an additional 11,000sq metres of storage and pick-and-pack space for large DIY retailer Woodie’s and other clients. In the next 18 months, the Lusk HQ will convert solely to cross-dock to serve European mainland business. Tracey is proud of the industry


recognition Ace has achieved this year, winning Freight Forwarding Company of the Year at the Irish Logistics & Transport Awards and joining the Platinum Club in Deloitte’s Best Managed Companies scheme. Up to 20 companies each year receive the entry level gold standard and are upgraded to platinum aſter seven years if they pass the relevant audits.


Lo-lo slow as Belfast


Belfast Harbour’s two container terminals have merged into one following the decision to award Irish Continental Group (ICG) the sole operating concession. Belfast Container Terminal (BCT), formerly operated by ICG, saw its last service on 1 September. The group relocated downstream to the larger Victoria Terminal 3 (VT3), which was run by Peel Ports subsidiary Coastal Container Line. ICG ran the two facilities in


tandem for three months before fully switching over to VT3. It has sub-contracted handling there to Scruttons, as it


///IRELAND consolidates


cranes offer sufficient capacity for current throughput, he adds. Indeed, first-half container volumes through Belfast saw a 4% decline. “The Sterling


to Euro


exchange rate has made exporters less competitive and agrifood is down, dairy products and refrigerated meat especially,” O’Neill says. China has reduced its imports and the Russian sanctions are having an impact. Russia used to account for a


did


before at BCT. “The majority of VT3 staff who were employed by Coastal have


transferred


across,” says Joe O’Neill, commercial director for Belfast Harbour. VT3 now sees two weekly


calls by BG Freight Line, Peel Ports’ feeder operator; two by Eucon, which fulfils the same role in ICG; plus one per week by Xpress Container Line and CMA CGM. ICG has the VT3 concession for a five-year period, with a further three- year option. Quarry company Conexpo,


which exports road stone to the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium, is taking over the vacated BCT site. Meanwhile, storage areas and truck lanes on three hectares at the north end of VT3 have been reconfigured to streamline the flow of boxes, O’Neill says. The terminal’s three ship-to- shore and three Transtainer


third of EU cheese exports and the slowdown in the Chinese economy is already affecting the dairy sector. A third member of the BRIC quartet, Brazil, also has a weakening economy. “Two dairy processors


producing milk powder and cheese have separately reported that the market is down by two-thirds this year,” O’Neill says. The results of this can be seen in the 30% fall in milk prices over the last 15 months. Belfast’s ro-ro volumes


so far this year have been broadly similar to 2014 levels. Services


to Liverpool have


seen significant growth at the expense of Heysham, which was seriously affected by rough weather in January and February. In


summary, O’Neill says:


“We’re not enjoying the same level of growth as we’ve seen over the last two or three years. It’s not a negative economic story for Northern Ireland, but not overwhelmingly positive either.”


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44