Davies Turner was founded an astonishing 150 years ago in 1870 as the first fully legitimate economic operator in Europe and now a truly international freight forwarder. With such established longevity comes a trusted reputation within the industry. The latest exciting expansion is an express freight rail service across Asia from China departing twice weekly from Wuhan in the central Hubei Chinese province. The LCL rail service currently departs on Wednesdays and Saturdays, directly to a UK rail terminal and takes approximately 20-25 days from door-to-terminal. Shipping rates from Asia to the UK increased exponentially last year to a record 14 times higher than pre-COVID-19 rates.
Industry analyst S&P Global Platts saw costs rocket to $18,000 per container with shipping transit schedules double from 35 to 70 days. The Chinese rail links are notably faster than sea freight (saving approximately 22 days) and on average it is 70% cheaper than air freight, offering customers a quicker alternative to more traditional transportation. It is this kind of ingenious, bold thinking that has maintained Davies Turner’s position as a leading International Freight Forwarder.
With 23 UK branches including its head office in London this company successfully swerved the fallout from COVID-19 by thinking outside the box. Andrew Ford, Branch Manager from the Rotherham branch focuses on less conventional transportation, “We specialise in awkward and out of gauge shipments. We have shipped many vehicles ranging in sizes and type to small rail engines as well as large machinery moves.”
Although the majority of the pandemic restrictions have lifted alongside a slow reduction in shipping costs, there are new unprecedented challenges from the war in Ukraine, organised port strikes and the cost-of-living crisis as Andrew highlights, “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had various impacts on various different industries: freight and logistics being one of them. The port of Odessa was shut down for almost six months after the city was hit with Russian missiles. Ukraine is a big part of the global food industry, exporting grain via the sea out of Odessa. With this coming to a temporary halt, global food prices have shot up with the limitation of grain available for food production. This has also affected the freight industry as fuel rates increase and has in effect accelerated a global recession.”
As an International Freight Forwarder, the company is at the mercy of world events such as the war in Ukraine and to mitigate further risk, is always looking for positive news to pass onto end-user customers. Whilst shipping transit rates continue to fall after peaking last year, Andrew is confident that the company can ride the storm of new challenges ahead.
“The cost-of-living crisis may affect how much manufacturers are able to import and export, due to consumers not being able to afford buy these goods. However, we hope that the freight rates dropping will make it so that manufacturers will still be able to afford to ship and import goods to keep the supply chain moving.”
As the company continues to navigate its way through many challenging external aspects it has continued to receive many heavyweight industry awards. In 2020
, Davies Turner won not only the coveted European Logistics Category Award from The British International Freight Association (BIFA) but was also shortlisted for the Supply Chain Management category. Philip Stephenson, Chairman of the Davies Turner group was delighted,
“Davies Turner is well known for its comprehensive European overland portfolio which offers direct groupage, part load and full load trailer services with dedicated express transit and super-express options. The market for European overland operations is very mature and highly commoditised, so the opportunities to differentiate the service offering are limited. Furthermore, a significant proportion of the traffic on the network is booked and contributed by other freight forwarding and logistics companies, which do not operate their own services. Increasingly these important third party co-loaders have sought the ability to obtain immediate rates for any of our European overland export and import trailer services in real time, without having to resort to time-consuming telephone calls, emails or filling in online quotation request forms.”
The ingenious unique selling proposition of e-freight quotations and third-party bookings 24 hours a day has led to a substantial increase in business development, especially across the European sector.
With digital innovation and the express Chinese rail system, Davies Turner will be leading freight forwarding services well into the next future.
For an Air, Sea, Road freight quotation and further information, please see the details below:
T 01709 529709
rotherhamsales@daviesturner.co.uk
www.daviesturner.com