An internationally-accredited haulage business with expertise ranging from storing food to moving heavy industrial equipment has become the latest member of the Pallet-Track network.
UKI Express Transport Ltd, which is based in in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, joins the Wolverhampton-based business from July 7.
UKI was previously a major third-party inputter into all of the UK’s pallet networks and the move marks the 16-year-old business’s first foray into network membership.
The rapidly-expanding business has grown its warehouse capacity from 45,000 to 300,000 sq. ft in just five years and has been operating at full capacity during the pandemic, also opening new facilities in Teesside in May.
Its BRC AA-accredited facilities housed food for supermarkets as they dealt with panic-buying, as well as storing sanitised equipment for the NHS. During this time, it moved more than 12,000 pallets for storage in an eight-week period.
It has made the move to join Pallet-Track as it looks to guarantee and maintain high service levels in a post-Brexit Britain still coming to terms with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The arrangement will see UKI service part of the WA postcode area.
“We have worked with every single pallet network over the years as a third-party inputter, but we always said that if got the opportunity to work with one, it would always be Pallet-Track,” said managing director Peter Gummerson.
“Pallet-Track shares a lot of our business values – it prides itself on zero errors and never losing consignments.
“As far as I am concerned, it is the best in the industry when it comes to service levels and its support systems for shareholder members are robust and well managed. It is also very competitively priced.”
UKI holds FORS accreditation and also specialises in the movement of heavy industrial equipment for the plant hire sector – from lighting towers to 18-tonne diesel generators.
UKI Express Transport commercial director Geoff Birch said the business’s diverse offering and ‘can-do’ approach made it an attractive proposition to customers and Pallet-Track.
“Not many businesses can offer the different services that we can provide – from industrial plant hire work to the storage and distribution of Liverpool football shirts and memorabilia – there are never two customers or days the same,” he said.
Pallet-Track CEO Caroline Green said: “It’s part of our mission to be the best network and receiving positive feedback from existing and new members is always the biggest endorsement of what we are trying to achieve.
“Businesses like UKI Express are putting their trust, and that of their hard-won customers, in our network, which is why we are so passionate about being the best.”
