Shaun Godfrey - Road runner

Tell us about your company.

Delamode is a logistics and supply-chain business and is part of a group of companies with operations in the UK, Holland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldavia, Lithuania, Latvia and Hong Kong. Delamode is focused on international European transport and, more recently, sea freight to and from the Far East as well as UK warehousing and transport. The company has its own consolidation services covering all East European countries and full truck and forwarding services to and from all West European markets.

Have you expanded recently?

The business invested in an 84,000sq ft freehold warehouse facility at Great Notley in Essex in 2006. The facility is fully racked out with 10,000 pallet locations and 12,000sq ft of mezzanine flooring to offer fulfillment services.

Describe your broker relationship.

Delamode has worked with FMW, now part of the Oval Group, since 1995 and has found the services offered to be highly credible. The personnel have always been very accommodating, offering advice and assistance as well as comprehensive pricing presentation schedules at renewal; the service offered is reflected in the short periods of time extended to insurance matters. Delamode has had the same broker and a similar backroom support team for many years and this has enabled relationships to be formed at ground-floor level, which enables the smooth operation of all insurance matters. The main insurer supporting the policies is Lonham (a cargo and freight Lloyd's underwriting agency), which we have found to be responsive and accommodating, particularly when reviewing more difficult claims. Our claims experience with Lonham and FMW has been very positive.

What challenges face your business?

The main issues in the logistics sector are maintaining the excellent service levels required by Delamode's customers and competitive pricing. This situation offers further challenges as we are seeing wage inflation for experienced, customer-service orientated operations staff, the people that are required to deliver the expected service levels.

What impact has the credit crunch had on Delamode?

The implied credit crunch seems to have refocused customers to review their operational costs and obtain further services, included in the initial pricing structure, to mitigate falling sales or reduced margins. The increase in fuel prices is also disturbing the market and, although these are passed on to customers, fixed annual transport prices are now being reviewed constantly. The cost of transport is now a greater percentage of manufacturing cost, having increased significantly over the past eight months. Fortunately, the weak pound has made the export market appear buoyant and a large percentage of Delamode's business activity is export oriented.