Q: How did you get into the Transport and Logistics industry Graham? It started in my education years enjoying geography, maths and economics which took me onto Aston University with a degree in Transport Management. During my degree I did an industrial placement with Turners (Soham) Ltd. at Newmarket. I spent a great year there learning all about the road transport sector. Moving food from farms and importers to supermarket distribution centres gave me a real insight into the fast moving transport industry. After my placement year I returned to university, completed the degree and Turners offered me a position. Learning a great deal from the owner I headed up the Temperature Controlled transport division, with 400 vehicles operating throughout the UK, for 15 years. During my time there I instigated a joint venture between Turners and Solstor. Finding that Solstor had the international dynamic to it I wanted to expand my Transport and Logistics experience and joined them as Managing Director. Q: Can you provide an overview of Solstor today? Solstor started transporting fruit from Europe to the UK and the operation quickly grew. We are now involved in transporting many products, including chilled and frozen food and more recently moving into dry food, drinks, packaging, manufactured goods and anything that requires a secure and time critical delivery. For our customers a fast, efficient and on-time delivery is really important especially as food products need to be as fresh as possible and many non-food products are delivered within a just in time supply chain. We have a team of long serving staff who provide a regional and local touch from a wide range of countries within the European network. Q: What is the history of Solstor and how does it differ from other transport service businesses? We remain a family-owned business and the principal trading company owned by the family was a fruit importing business established more than 60 years ago. Through experience and having a real passion in providing the customer with a quality service, the family set up their own in-house transport business 40 years ago and it has grown to what Solstor represents now. We differ from others because of our regional connections to our customers. Our team hold great local knowledge, expertise and cultural understanding. We provide an excellent quality of service to our customers, through a mix of our own resources and with the support of many long-standing supply partners.
Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges for the industry, and what sort of things are Solstor doing to address these? We are not a 9 to 5 industry, we are transporting goods 24 hours per day, 365 days per year and with the challenges of finding sufficient labour talent throughout Europe we focus heavily on retaining our team which are so important to us. This focus extends to the drivers working with us and our planning team work hard to route the trucks home as often as feasibly possible, so the drivers do not have to spend too much time away, which helps us attract and retain good people. The wellbeing of the environment is another challenge which we all face and obviously transport is a significant carbon emitter. The fluidity of operation throughout Europe makes both the move to rail or water and the use of alternative fuel technology very challenging at the moment for the mix of customers we have and the products we deliver. We take decisions each day with our environmental responsibility in mind and we have a clear focus on continually reducing road miles through improved European networking and we work closely with our customers to identify further opportunities to reduce our footprint. Linked to the environment is the increasing volatility of the weather which can impact the work we do. We have had situations recently where, due to floods, fresh produce has been completely wiped out for growers resulting in alternative products needing to be sourced elsewhere. This alternative sourcing can be in another country so by having a network which spans all of Europe we can really support our customers with their plans to replace the failed crops. Finally, Brexit and ongoing changes with custom requirements remain a challenge for international transport operators. Legislation has added time and complexity to the process which is also difficult for our customers and adds costs in. We have a great Customs Team who work with our partners and clients to navigate the changes and ensure that custom rules and regulations are met.
Q: There’s a lot in the press about the sector and the shipments coming into ports, but how fierce is competition in the sector at the moment? Inevitably supply chain cost is a challenge with increasing labour and equipment costs and volatility in fuel costs. Our customers are looking to reduce their costs and we are always looking at ways that we can become more efficient to stay competitive whilst ensuring that this does not impact the quality service we are able to offer to our clients and partners. It is a challenging time, but our job is to provide our customers the most cost-efficient service without compromising our high quality standards. It’s a tough market, but we are committed to serving the sector and are proud of the reputation and feedback we receive from our clients time and time again. Q: How has demand changed since Brexit? UK Export collapsed after Brexit and our volumes fell by over 50%. Customers that supplied smaller volumes into Europe stopped as it was no longer viable. We took a step back and thought about how we could overcome this and created a suite of services to help our customers trade again. Solstor have an in house customs team where we offer a complete service to our clients in the UK and Europe on a direct representation basis. We also offer the full service of Health and Veterinary requirements to our clients for both import and export. We have a wealth of knowledge in process where we act as advisors for our clients to make the most cost effective solution for their freight needs. We have also restructured lanes from and to Ireland with direct services which cut out the need for Customs services. Post Brexit we have moved from a Transport business to a Transport and customs business to a Transport, Customs and Vet service business which has helped bring us even closer to our customers. We are seen as an essential link to their business by taking away all that complexity of exporting into Europe. We are on the same journey now with imports, with our evolving transport, customs and vet solutions in countries throughout Europe.
TRANSPORT AND LOGISTICS | SCRUTTON BLAND | 11
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