Horizon was pleased to report back a 100% record of on-time deliveries on the report, which included deliveries from Somerset, through to Lanarkshire and into Northern Ireland.

Additional information was required by the customer to identify the “busy periods” and “trouble hot-spots”, which of their customers were requiring extra parts and which parts were being replaced the most.  Horizon was able to meet the requirements allowing for the customer to proceed with their internal checks and planning.

For January 89% of calls were logged as “In Hours Calls”.  These were calls made between 09:00 and 17:59 accross a seven day week.  Out of hour’s calls, 18:00 to 08:59, made up the remaining 11% of calls.  The busiest call time was between 11:00 and 13:00, making up just fewer than 40% of the calls.  5% of calls were recorded between the hours of 20:00 and 21:00, with only 6 hours in the day not receiving any calls.

Percentage of Calls

In a previous article, Multi-Cultural Cargo, we looked at the diversity of staff that has worked at Horizon International Cargo, allowing them to understand local needs and requirements.  Following on closely from this is the need to speak to partners, customers and vendors in their local language and dialect.  Many global companies still rely on English to communicate with global customers, perhaps with a sprinkling of Spanish, allowing them to cover the majority of Western countries throughout Europe and the America’s.  This is often enough to do business and allow the movement of cargo from point a to point b.  Horizon International Cargo however likes to go one step further, reaching beyond boundaries, to build a lasting relationship with their customers and partners.  This extra step allows them to transform the services they offer from good to great.

A list of languages spoken by Horizon staff (as at 25th December 2011)

Quality in any Language

1. Ambonese Malay
2. Catalan
3. Chinese – Cantonese
4. Chinese – Mandarin
5. Czech
6. Dutch
7. English
8. French
9. German
10. Italian
11. Japanese
12. Korean
13. Polish
14. Portuguese
15. Russian
16. Sicilian
17. Slovak
18. Spanish
19. Tagalog
20. Visayan

With such a global spread from the Far East (Tokyo Office), through the most Southern State on the mainland of the United States (Florida), to East, West and Central Europe, it’s no surprise that Horizon International Cargo’s Multi-Cultural diversity is widespread.

If we take a quick look to see the different nationalities that have worked at the company you will start to get a feel for Horizon’s Multiculturalism.  For Horizon International Cargo, whose industry is that of global logistics and supply chain solutions, having a vast multicultural background is key to understanding its global customer’s needs.  It is only enhanced by the range of languages that are spoken throughout the group, though we’ll discuss that at another time.

The different nationalities that have worked for Horizon International Cargo include

Multi-Cultural Employees at Horizon

1. English
2. Welsh
3. Irish
4. Czech
5. Dutch
6. Italian
7. Polish
8. Russian
9. Sardinian
10. Slovakian
11. Spanish
12. Kenyan
13. South African
14. Indian
15. Filipino
16. Chinese
17. Japanese
18. Korean
19. American
20. Brazilian
21. Colombian
22. Cuban
23. Jamaican
24. Peruvian
25. Puerto Rican

Horizon International Cargo has had 1/8th of the world’s nationalities work for it’s global operation!

The Beaumont Estate

Steeped in history, the Beaumont Estate Dates back to the 14th century when the Estate was a family home for many years until 1854.  It was sold to the Society of Jesus as a training college for novices and then a Roman Catholic boarding school. Nine years later and a chapel was built by renowned architect Joseph Hansom with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, carefully painted in the early 20th century by Romaine Walker.

Once the school closed in the late 1960′s, Beaumont Estate was purchased by British computer company ICL who used it as their training centre. In 2003, Hayley Conference Centres bought the venue and developed it into an upscale conference venue. The original White House in the grounds and the Chapel were left untouched and under-utilised.

The conference room

Horizon International Cargo’s two day sales conference took place from the 8th to the 9th of December, and featured representation from almost every Horizon office, making it the largest group conference held so far.  Participants flew in from as far as Tokyo and Salt Lake City to as close as Heathrow airport to join in the meeting of minds and ideas.  The location, chosen by long serving Horizon employee Shelley Digby (17 years working for Horizon in the Heathrow office), was chosen due to its modern conference facilities and as a picturesque backdrop for the weary travellers to relax and recover from their flights).

Nigel Davies, Group Chairman commented

“the two days were a great success, bringing our sales teams together has enabled us to build on the synergies across the business and focus our minds and thoughts on the key developments for 2012. Whilst the prevailing economic situation does not look encouraging, we firmly believe that with the strategy we have developed and the strength of our Sales and Operations teams we will be enable to continue our growth in 2012 as we have done repeatedly over the past 10 years”.

UK Managing Director Mark Talbot remarked

“The synergy, energy and enthusiasm in the room was fantastic.  It allowed us to gain ideas and perspective from different global markets, and tie them in with the work and progress we’ve been making (in the UK)..”

2011 Horizon Sales Conference - click to view

Back Row : (left to right)
Rob Rankin – Sea Air Logistics, Koji Tejima – Horizon UK, Yugo Takahashi – Horizon Japan,
Mike Buckby – Horizon UK, Jose M Lopez – Horizon Spain, Peter Ribaric – Horizon Slovakia,
John van der Linde – Horizon Netherlands, Callum Aldrich – Horizon UK, Boy van Wetten – Horizon Netherlands
Front Row : (left to right)
Jiho Ham – Horizon UK,, Pavel Stevcik – Horizon Slovakia, Daniel Hart – Global Director,
Nigel Davies – Chairman,  Todd Lemp – Horizon USA (SLC), Stewart Brook – Horizon UK / USA,
Mike Zeraschi – Horizon UK, Alejandro Bonnemaison – Horizon USA (ORD) , Charles Noh – Horizon USA (MIA)

Please pass along a tremendous thank you for your help to your entire team.  Horizon went well beyond our expectations in assisting us on a very important mission.  Your team doesn’t get to see all of the collective gratitude from sources as diverse as our Japan sales, operations finance, corporate strategy and other teams, so I wanted to let them know that their work is deeply appreciated not just by the logistics group, but by many other groups within ADC.  

Thank you from everyone at ADC,
Nathan
Manager, Transportation, Logistics and Customs

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Power Consumption Comparison

I-Gel have a very handy “Carbon Calculator” which allows you to gain an estimate on the number of tonnes of carbon you will save my making the switch.

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The special award was in appreciation of the tireless work and participation Daniel has done in promoting business between independent freight forwarders in 80 countries and Horizon over many years.

Atlas Plaque of Appreciation

Daniel has almost 30 years of freight experience under his belt, joining Horizon in 2003 with the start up of the ocean freight division in the UK.  A regular visitor to the WCA (10 times since 2007) and Atlas (7 times since 2004) conferences, Daniel Hart has become a familiar name and face amongst the international freight forwarding community.

It’s not been all high-flying international conferences for Daniel though, during the early 1990’s he spent four years living in two of the poorest countries in the world in Africa, whilst they went through Civil War.

That is one of many little known facts about Horizon’s Global Network Director, whose career in the shipping industry and freight forwarding has provided first hand experience in oil trading, ship chartering, plane chartering, shipping line sales, insurance programmes run by the TT Club underwritten by Lloyds of London, internet cargo surveying programs, documentary credits, extensive in-depth knowledge of cross trades and of cause freight forwarding and supply chain logistics.