Exhibition Freighting, one of the UK’s premier exhibition freight forwarders, is pleased to announce that it is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year and enters its fifth decade right at the forefront of an expanding business. Based in Tonbridge, Kent, it manages freight logistics to high-profile exhibitions in over 60 countries and has played an instrumental part in the success of many globally renown companies in the broadcast industry and beyond over the past forty years.
One of the first members of the IELA (International Exhibition Logistics Association) in 1985 and winner of the Best Export Agent Award in 2006, the company was founded by Len Troost in 1982. Initially based out of his garage, its big breakthroughs came in 1983 when it first won the contract to take British Telecom to Telecom Geneva, was appointed the official freight forwarder for the influential Montreux International Television Symposium in Montreux and signed its first deal with a then rapidly expanding Quantel.
Other shows and clients soon followed. A storied list includes some of the biggest names in the industry of the 1980s and 90s and up to the present day: Snell and Wilcox, Solid State Logic, AMS, Vistek, Tektronix, Pro-Bel, Pesa, Tandberg, NDS, Miranda, Vinten, Cintel, and Advent Communications all became clients. Meanwhile the expanding tradeshow calendar has seen the company work closely with a growing list of shows worldwide including IBC, NAB, CABSAT, Broadcast Singapore, CES, Interbee, Satis, AES, BES and Broadcast India, BIRTV, and more, and it has forged long-term relationships with IABM and Trade Fair Support.
It hasn’t just been broadcast either. Exhibition Freighting has become a key player in a wide range of other verticals including Machinery, Oil & Gas, Aerospace, and Medical. And it has used its expertise to work on some of the biggest occasions in the world, delivering critical shipments that have ensured major sporting events including the Olympics, Commonwealth Games, and soccer World Cups and Euros have all proceeded smoothly.
Exhibition Freighting’s current management team is headed by Managing Director, Neil Goatcher, who joined in 1996, and Director, Craig Travers, who joined in 2000, and thus have almost 50 years combined experience with the company between them.
“The industry has changed a lot in forty years,” comments Goatcher. “We’ve all had to pull together and weather the storms of global events such as SARS, 9/11, the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud that stranded so many people and so much equipment in Las Vegas for weeks in April 2010, and, of course, two years of Covid pandemic. Plus budgets are squeezed tighter than ever — I doubt that we’ll ever return to the days from the 1980s when one manufacturer shipped cherry wood decking to IBC and NAB just because it could. But what hasn’t changed is the importance of customer service, and we’ll always give our customers the same attention to detail as technology and regulations change that we always have; ensuring their freight gets to where it needs to go on time and in budget.
“It’s a formula that’s worked for us for the first forty years, we hope it will work for us for the next forty too.”
