Samskip and Howdens awarded a Highly Commended for the 2016 Supply Chain Partnership Award

8 November 2016 – Samskip and Howdens have been awarded a Highly Commended at the prestigious Global Freight Awards 2016 for Supply Chain Partnership.

Considered to be the ultimate accolade for service providers involved in unitised transport, this year’s Lloyd’s Loading List Global Freight Awards were staged at London’s Lancaster London Hotel on Thursday November 3.

“This acknowledgement reflects what a close partnership based on full transparency can achieve,” says Richard Beales, Trade Director. “It recognises a relationship based on early demand planning and order pattern visibility from the shipper, and scalability and routing flexibility from the supplier, and how critical both elements of the partnership have been to delivering Howdens products without fail”.

Howdens, the UK’s leading supplier of fitted kitchens, appliances and joinery products, and multimodal service provider Samskip have developed a cost effective multimodal solution for moves between Italy and the UK. The partnership focused on how to achieve cost effective, structurally stable, year-round services connecting Italy and the UK.

Service flexibility and reliability was fully put to the test in 2015 when a complete shut down in Channel Tunnel Services coincided with Howdens’ extraordinary summer loading peak period. Unaffected by events at Calais, Samskip was able to demonstrate how its collaborative work with Howdens paid off in terms of reliability, cost effectiveness and flexibility when a key UK service link was in disarray.

Samskip devised a flexible ‘drop and swap’ strategy to replenish equipment availability continuously, with truckers dropping off empty containers and swapping them for laden units in less than five minutes.

Using the multimodal option has also brought net environmental gains. The 2015 Howdens loads moved by Samskip avoided 292,082 kg as CO2 emissions from equivalent road moves.

Beales says: “Our close collaboration with Howdens has led to a significant increase in inquiries from companies seeking to reduce their exposure to Calais, with many considering shipment in containers for the first time.”

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the Global Freight Awards is the highlight of the freight and logistics industry calendar; rewarding the best talent and achievements of the year.

Note to editors:

Samskip offers pan-European, environmentally responsible combined transport services via shortsea, road, rail and inland waterway routes. We are committed to cost-effectiveness, operational excellence and best practice in sustainable transport.

High frequency services connect destinations across Europe, the Baltic States, Russia and Central Asia, both door-to-door (including collection) and quay-to-quay, transported using a wide range of owned vessels, containers, trucks and trailers. To match equipment to cargoes shipped, options include a full range of ISO containers and reefers, including 33-pallet capacity 45ft units.

In all cases shippers can make real choices based on frequency of service, transit times, freight rates and sustainability.