SOUTHAMPTON FREIGHT SERVICES LTD

New Team Members at SFS

The year 2016 had been another big one for our family business. We celebrated our first anniversary inside our beautiful new facility, the further development of our global partnerships/services and, probably most importantly, we have a few new team members !! And considering the world seems to have gone crazy over “Brexit”, we’ve once again bucked the trend and added an international feel to our operation!

Transport and Warehouse

Night Driver

Our long serving night driver, Geoff Cummings, who has been with us since 2001, had decided to take a step back from the long nights of delivering our exports to Heathrow and returning with our imports. He’s now taken over our second nightly Heathrow vehicle, delivering our courier shipments to meet the early flight closeout.

Replacing him on the airfreight run is Maciej Andrzej Jurczak, an experienced HGV driver who’s originally from Poland, and been living here for more than 10 years. His desire to learn, train and get involved with the team is unquestionable. In his interview, when asked about the pronunciation of his name, he simply said “just call me Magic”  Well, Magic he certainly is!  He had some large boots to fill after Geoff had been doing this night run for 15 years! He always wears a smile on his face and is a willing part of our team – your airfreight is in safe hands.

Warehouse Assistant

Our warehouse operation has developed considerably in recent years and, with the added pressures of our summer cruise season, this year has seen the throughput increase dramatically with the introduction of more storage and distribution clients, pick/pack operations and a general increase in our cargo handling.

Enter Mark Savage, son of Sue Savage, our Courier Supervisor. His willingness to get involved and learn the systems in our warehouse has been a revelation, working closely with our other warehouse operative, former apprentice trainee Callum Mace, and under the direction of our Transport & Warehouse Manager, Stuart Mahon, to really push the efficiency of our warehouse operation.

Operations

Imports

With Derrick hitting 70 years old this year, and taking things at a slightly slower pace this year, we needed to bring a steady and experienced hand to help our extremely busy import department. Enter David Rowe, a former customer with almost 40 years experience in the freight industry.

David brings with him a wealth of experience of customs regulatory process, excise and bonded goods and tariff classification. He’s settled in swiftly to the import team a great sense of customer service, a diligent approach to his work and a thick skin to handle the ‘banter’ on that department! We’re absolutely delighted to have him as part of our team.

 

 

Air Exports

Last, but by no means least, this September we saw Elizabeth leave us, after 5 fantastic years, to go and work for a shipping line. Replacing her was never going to be easy, but our great recruitment partner, Steve Wyeth of SDW Recruitment came up trumps once again, with a young lady recently relocating to the UK from Brazil.

Carol Zecchinel Reinaldo, from Santa Caterina in the South of Brazil, moved to the UK to further her career and was looking for a break into the freight forwarding world. At SFS we believe you can teach everything except desire. Carol brings a wealth of experience and understanding of logistics, both import and export, and all modes of transport, working mostly for trading companies back in Brazil. Plus she has an MBA in International Business and International Trade Management ! A very enthusiastic and smiley personality, Carol has also settled in very quickly to the company, during what is an extremely busy period for the air export department!

Our MD Ross Negus said;

“Looking back over the years its a strange feeling, knowing where we came from back in 1998, with just a handful of people, it’s a surreal experience each and every time we add another member of staff to the family here. We now have 33 on the books, and still operate exactly like we did all those years ago – the same friendly, family spirit. Just a much larger family ! It certainly makes the Christmas party a lot more fun!”

We officially welcome the new members to the SFS Family !