BIFA Awards
Anticipating customer needs
Young Freight Forwarder Award
Virgin Atlantic Cargo is proud to sponsor BIFA’s Young Freight
BIFA Young Freight Forwarder of the Year fi nalist Dalya Henry brought a shipper’s perspective with her when she joined ITD Global in what was originally a temporary role. Five years on, she has progressed to run the company’s freight operations
airfreight them in one go. This results in a better price and better visibility; customers track one shipment with ITD, rather than numerous shipments with various couriers. “This has given our customers a better service that they did not even necessarily know they needed.” Dalya has also helped implement freight management software that allows customers to self-serve. Agreeing that personal service is vital in logistics, she said: “It is good to be able to offer customers the option.” Forwarder Award to recognise and encourage the next generation of industry leaders. As well as rewarding the progress of the best young people, this award helps to highlight the vital role freight forwarders play in the growth and development of the industry. VAC recognises the importance of developing and retaining talented young people and is confident this award will help to attract more recruits that want to build a future career in a sector that is so important to the economy and international trade.
P rior to joining ITD Global, Dalya Henry was head fashion buyer at Henri
Lloyd. She moved to ITD in 2018 and immediately loved being “on the other side of the fence”. She re fl ected: “I had little experience of freight forwarding, but I had transferable skills from my previous role. I understand how pivotal it can be for a company to get stock to where it needs to be on time, and I also understand how important it is to answer questions before customers need to ask.” Stepping up Dalya headed up ITD’s air freighting of PPE to NHS Trusts during COVID- 19, before stepping into her current role as head of the company’s freight operations.
“ We now consolidate all their shipments in our Shenzhen warehouse and airfreight
She has been instrumental in setting up a new air freight consolidation service. “Customers had been importing from China using couriers,” she explained. “We now consolidate all their shipments in our Shenzhen warehouse and
them in one go.
A change of direction
Apprentice of the Year Award
share their insights about the industry and tell inspiring stories about their career in freight. It is all about getting as many young people into the industry as possible.” A highlight for Joel so far was a talk by a former apprentice who became a managing director, proving that “the sky is the limit”. For now, though, he is focused on developing his all-round knowledge of freight forwarding before deciding which path to choose. Seetec Outsource Training & Skills is a leading provider of innovative training, education and recruitment. Seetec Outsource has delivered thousands of successful programmes to a range of small and large organisations nationwide and helped many people into employment. Seetec Outsource provides apprenticeships and traineeships on a range of subjects at various levels.
Following a degree in sports rehab, Joel Amado decided to take a chance on something totally unrelated: freight forwarding. Being part of a team at Aramex has seen him become deeply invested in logistics
“The balance of work and the apprenticeship was almost – almost! – impossible,” Joel Amado said. “But I want to help as much as I can, so I want to learn more and more. I always ask the rest of the team if I can do anything for them, and vice versa; it is a great team.” Joel’s positive, proactive approach has not gone unrecognised. Besides reaching the finals of BIFA’s Apprentice of the Year category for 2022, he was named ‘Hero of the Month’ at Aramex in March 2022. “It is a bit like employee of the month and I won it because of my contribution to the team and because of how well my apprenticeship (which I completed in
October) was going,” he said. Joel is also on BIFA’s Young Freight Forwarder Network committee – which he sees as an opportunity to explore his potential and get out of his comfort zone. “With our events, we hope to encourage people to follow in the same footsteps as our speakers, who talk about leadership,
18 | September 2023
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