Samskip launches pan-European logisitics division
sea and air transport from 30 locations around the globe, has
launched a new logistics division.
The business, named Samskip Logistics, has been launched to provide customers with a one-stop comprehensive solution for transport and inventory requirements including warehousing, storage, stock control and distribution.
"It was born out of our freight forwarding activities and is very much market driven," said the new company's UK managing director Simon M Dwyer. "We want to be able to offer our customers a little bit more than we have been providing for them in the past.
"In terms of added value services our operation also ranges through services like administration, documentation, in-house logistics management - basically we set out to be an organisation's total shipping and transport arm."
The new service, which is being offered at all of Samskip's existing offices - in the UK, Iceland, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Russia, Canada, the United States, China and South Korea - has been designed to meet a growing market demand for effective supply-chain solutions. The new logistics arm will operate from 21 offices including Immingham and Liverpool in the UK.
"It means we can provide all our customers with total transport solutions, connecting continents," said Dwyer. "By concentrating all our general forwarding and warehousing activities under a separate company name and management within the Samskip Group, our aim is to raise significantly both the level and the flexibility of the services we offer."
At present the majority of the company's workload is seafood orientated. However, Samskip claims that that remit is about to broaden considerably.
"It is our desire to become more involved in other products related to frozen and chilled distribution," said Dwyer. "Samskip Logistics is a further service that we anticipate over time will become a self-sustaining part of the group's activities, enabling the marketplace to have even more choice."
Iceland-based Samskip has 30 offices, 20 of them abroad. The company employs a workforce of 850 around the world and last year generated a turnover of €200 million, a 23 per cent increase over 2002.
Its four areas of activity are container transport, conventional and project cargo transport, reefer logistics and worldwide logistics with the four core businesses supported by warehouses and cold stores in all the major ports from which it operates.
Samskip's Icelandic service uses four container vessels, which ply to European ports including Immingham on Humberside as well as the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Scandinavian services link Immingham with the Swedish ports of Halmstad and Wallhamn along with a Baltic service linking Immingham to Riga serving the Baltic states and Russia.
