It’s been a tough year for commercial supply chains, freight forwarding and international logistics – and the busiest year in International Forwarding’s 32-year history.
You can see what kept us on the go, from post-Brexit changes in EU shipping to the new Birmingham Clean Air Zone. Looking back at 2021, here are just a few stories from the IFL blog in the past 12 months…
A look back at 2021
- Post-Brexit customs checklist for trading with Europe
- Free pallet delivery of winter clothing to homeless
- Warehouse storage in our new Birmingham storage facility
- Brexit chaos, Covid outbreak, record volumes – a month in the life of a freight forwarder
- Staff interview: Celebrating 19 years with International Forwarding
- Helping businesses get back to work after lockdown
- Cleaner transport vehicles for the Birmingham Clean Air Zone
- Our supporting role in NHS supply chain
- Endurance golf challenge raises funds for Prostate Cancer UK
Adapting to change
We also navigated a website refresh in the middle of all this. As an independent freight forwarder, the business is changing and growing, and so we wanted to show that upfront on the IFL homepage.
We continue to offer our core UK and European freight forwarding service that includes post-Brexit customs clearance services for goods under our control. As platinum members of the Palletways palletised freight network and with our own European groupage services, we are able to go the extra mile for our customers.
But we’ve also had to be agile in a challenging market. In recent years, we’ve more than doubled our warehouse facilities to offer three units in UK Midlands. This expansion of our warehousing logistics has been vital in helping us serve the needs of our business customers in Birmingham and the West Midlands. It has also created a hub for short or long-term pallet storage close to the UK motorway network for importers and exporters, as well as providing support for the NHS with temporary storage of PPE supplies.
Looking ahead to 2022
The next challenges are already here – from the rise of new Covid-variant Omicron to new Brexit-related import controls from 1 Jan 2022.
At this time of year, we would usually thank our loyal customers in person. This Christmas, to reduce the risks of Covid-19 transmission, we have decided to make a donation to Cancer Research UK instead.
We’d like to thank our fantastic customers for their ongoing business and also our staff for their extra hard work this year.
From all of us at International Forwarding we wish you a happy and healthy Christmas. And we look forwarding to seeing you again in 2022. (Here’s our service schedule over the holiday.)
