Air, Business, Freight News, Logistics, Road, Sea

Culina promises fresh look at food logistics

[ November 7, 2011   //   Chris ]

Culina Group has launched a new door-to-door, multimodal freight management service for fresh produce, horticulture and other perishable goods. Fresh Limited aims to overcome the current disconnects in existing supply chains by offering an integrated solution to manage the complete supply chain from source, whatever the country, to final delivery throughout the UK and Europe.

Launched as a separate operating business within the Culina Group, Culina Fresh Limited is headed by managing director, Thomas van Mourik (current CEO of Culina Logistics) and operations director, Paul Steele, who has 25 years’ freight forwarding experience, the last 15 in the perishable sector.

The business will initially operate from locations at Heathrow Airport, which will provide offices and warehousing to co-ordinate air freighting operations and Valencia, in the heart of Spain’s main growing region.

The company will also work with carefully selected partners in North America, South America, Eastern and Southern Africa, and the Far East who will provide local support services.

Many retailers are moving to direct sourcing as part of a strategy to simplify their supply chains, cut lead times and gain other efficiencies.

Paul Steele explains: “Producers and importers have been telling me that their existing supply chains are too disjointed and inefficient, and to date no-one has been prepared to take ownership and responsibility for door-to-door freight management. We’ve identified an exciting gap in the market which we’ll be filling with a high quality service that will address those issues and offer a new benchmark solution for freight management of temperature sensitive goods.”

From Heathrow the company will co-ordinate worldwide door-to-door temperature controlled air transportation services for customers needing to move fresh produce, horticulture and other short shelf-life items in and out of the UK and Europe as quickly as possible. In addition to the core freight service the business will offer innovative packaging solutions and other value-added activities.

The sea freight operation offers a door-to-door, tracked service with full UK port coverage and customs brokerage. The surface freight operation will comprise a full set of road and rail services. Culina Fresh will also be implementing a carbon emissions reduction programme to support its customers’ sustainability objectives.

The Group is also in the final stages of setting up the UK logistics arm of Culina Fresh.