New warehouse facilities unveiled

One of the UK’s leading independent freight forwarders, International Forwarding Ltd (IFL), has opened a new 2,000m² secure storage facility in the Midlands to support the company’s ambitious growth plans.

The company has just celebrated its 30th anniversary and the new facility almost doubles International Forwarding’s previous warehousing space.

The storage facility is part of a larger two-acre site, which includes 24-hour security, yard space for vehicle parking and trailer storage, and is located next to the company’s existing offices and hub in Coleshill, Birmingham, within close proximity of the M1, M5, M6 and M42, and just 10 minutes from Birmingham International Airport.

The timing of the expansion is particularly opportune as several existing customers required additional warehousing to protect their supply chain against Brexit-related issues. It also gives the sales team the tools to acquire additional forwarding and pallet distribution contracts from new UK and overseas-based customers.

The existing management team will oversee the physical freight handling and the back-office functions for the new site.

Rob Pike, managing director at International Forwarding, said: “We’re really excited about the new opportunities this expansion has opened up for the company, especially as it effectively doubles the size of our Coleshill hub operations.

“The warehousing part of the business has been running at maximum capacity for some time and we are confident that the additional facilities will deliver organic growth and strengthen the ability of the company to offer high quality and cost-effective supply chain logistics to the marketplace.”

International Forwarding started trading in 1989 to fill a niche in the West Midlands providing a personalised bespoke freight forwarding service to local exporters and importers. The company has continued to go from strength to strength and now has 60 staff, a fleet of 20 trucks and a turnover of almost £10million.

Since joining Palletways (Europe’s largest and fastest-growing express palletised freight network) in 2002, IFL has built a strong network of European partners to provide pan-European door-to-door export and import groupage services and is now a Platinum member - an accreditation earned as a result of high quality and consistent customer service.

Pictured: Rob Pike (managing director) in the new warehouse