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A group of Magellanic penguins watches a ship passing the Falkland Islands archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean
David Halliday: “We look at remote, difficult-to-serve and emerging markets.”
Seafast links Falklands into global markets
into a new five-year term in 2022. The service is going well and has proven itself on the inbound leg. This involves the transport of mostly UK products such as clothing, foodstuffs, construction materials anything required to sustain the growing community on the Falkland Islands. Very little commercial or civilian traffic now moves on military services.
The winner of the 2022 BIFA Specialist Services Award , Seafast Logistics, found a way to overcome both logistical and political challenges to offer the people of the Falkland Islands regular connections to a global network of trade
A good fit “From the start our intention was to do
something entirely different,” Halliday said. “Our business model is based on geography – we look at remote, difficult-to-serve and emerging markets such as those found in the Middle East and Africa. Currently [January 2023], for example, we are looking to support the Rwandan community, particularly fresh produce growers, with something resembling a proper cold chain of international standard. “The other aspect of our business model is the worldwide shipping of frozen produce, such as frozen poultry from Thailand for retailers. “So the Falkland Islands are a good fit for us. From the outset, we saw an opportunity there; it is a remote location whose biggest exports are frozen fish, squid and some lamb,” Halliday summed up. UK cold facility Seafast has had a small cold facility in the UK since 2009; in 2021, it opened a 100,000 sq ft freezer in Felixstowe that has enhanced the services provided to customers by allowing direct handling of refrigerated goods, either import or export, thereby reducing supply chain complexity. Seafast handles all the documentation and provides access to a global shipping network so that the Falkland Islands can export to and import from anywhere in the world.
Until late 2010, the shipping lines serving the Falkland Islands dealt directly with the islands. Then, regional political tensions resulted in shipping lines finding it difficult to continue
Seafast signs a new contract with lines to serve the Falkland Islands until the end of 2026
serving the Falkland Islands as risks outweighed the rewards of doing so.
SPECIALIST SERVICES AWARD
The community there was left dependent primarily on the services of military vessels whose schedule was infrequent and capacity unreliable as military cargoes would, naturally, always take precedence over civilian or commercial shipments. Three-year contract The Falkland Islands Development Corporation started looking for alternatives to replace the past service and contacted Seafast in May 2011. In September of that year, Seafast group chief executive David J Halliday and operations manager Gareth Player flew to the Falkland Islands, returning with a three-year contract that has been ongoing since then. Seafast entered
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March 2023
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