Uniserve are recognised as one of Europe’s largest Sea Freight importers. Having single-sourced their Sea Freight operations for over 20 years, customer ‘A’ were looking to move toward dual-sourcing and increasing their profile with shipping lines directly. The business was tendered out and Uniserve were awarded a 5000 teu contact to ship household furniture from China to the UK.

Problem:
A significant change in market conditions and an error in customer ‘A’s order processing had led to mis-forecast volumes for household furniture in the UK market. The commitment to 5000 teu’s had been guaranteed, and the containers were ready to leave the port of origin in China. Also, the storage of such bulky items in customer ‘A’s own DC would have put excessive strain on their distribution channels.


Solution:
Our Uniserve team travelled to China and arranged with our agent partners an extremely cost-effective solution in a Trade Free Zone.
The storage facility was at 10% of the cost of what may have been charged for goods entering the UK. As part of the storage in a Free Trade Zone, neither was there a duty tax reclaim.
When containers were ready to ship, they were delivered into the UK Port of destination and
Uniserve arranged direct delivery to customer ‘A’s customers.


Results:
• A massive 90% saving on storage of goods held in Chinese Trade Free Zone.
• The potential to reclaim a further 12% tax rebate.
• Furniture has become a more saleable part of the product-offering for customer ‘A’, due to simplified
. distribution in the UK.

Customer ‘A’ now has a major profile with shipping lines through a tri-partite agreement.

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