Two renowned logistics leaders merge to form Denholm Good Logistics, blending heritage with innovation
Formed through a recent merger between Good Logistics and Denholm Global Logistics, both part of the wider J&J Denholm Group, Denholm Good Logistics is an award-winning provider of an extensive range of logistics and shipping services. With an emphasis on logistics services across the manufacturing sector, the business has built an established network of more than 25 offices across the globe, with a particular presence in the UK, Ireland, Türkiye, China, and the USA.
“I’ve been in the industry since 2003, working for Good Logistics, which was established in Hull back in the 1800s,” begins Paul Ferguson, Director of Sales and Marketing. “We’re involved in all areas of shipping and logistics, imports and exports via sea, air and road freight. We have specialist teams to manage customs, warehousing, haulage and distribution. In 2021, we were acquired by the Denholm Group, and we’ve been running in parallel up until our official merger with Denholm Global Logistics in January 2024, when we launched the combined business under the new brand Denholm Good Logistics.
“We boast a broad portfolio of blue chip and SME customers across a wide range of industries from fast-moving consumables and fashion to industrial, manufacturing, food and drink and automotive. Although we work with businesses of all sizes, we focus primarily on medium and large sized companies, many of whom aspire to achieve further growth. This allows us to collaborate and form strategic partnerships where we look to find increased efficiency and cost savings across the supply chain. This consultative approach has seen us establish long-term relationships with many of our customers, some of whom have been with us since I started.
“We are heavily involved in imports and exports via sea, road, and air freight, with imports accounting for around 65 to 70 percent of our operations, with key trade lanes being Asia, Türkiye, and the Indian Sub-continent. We also have the advantage of having 1.7 million square feet of warehousing space across the UK along with our own fleet of trucks that are involved in both container haulage and distribution. We offer our customers a variety of warehousing solutions including storage, reworking, packing, palletizing and pick-and-pack through to onward delivery, either directly to the customer’s door or to central distribution centers.“
He continues. “Our main export markets are across Asia, the Middle East, and East and West Africa, but our presence in the USA has been growing since we opened an office in New Jersey in 2020. We believe that the USA and Latin American markets have huge growth potential for us, and they feature strongly in our long-term strategic plan.
“We’ve also recently established a joint venture company, BIG Logistics, in China with offices in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Ningbo and Dalian. This is just the start as we continue to add additional resources and capabilities to expand our operations in Asia.”
Reflecting on his career, Paul shares how developments in technology and digitalization have transformed the company’s operations. “When I first started working in logistics, people were faxing documents and the phones never stopped. While our people are still extremely busy, our communication has changed to emails, online portals and online correspondence,” Paul explains. “Digitalization has been a key area of our investment strategy and we’ve adopted state-of-the-art cloud-based technologies to ensure we operate an industry-leading operation, but ensure our people remain at the heart of our organization and will always be at the end of the phone for our customers to talk to. We appreciate the importance of technology but do not want to lose the human touch that customers still value so highly.
“We now have a single system to house our operations regardless of the mode of transport, which feeds our customer facing portal CONNECT. This means any kind
of shipment is visible at any time to customers through CONNECT; it displays the position of vessels and alerts customers when containers have moved through certain milestones. It also provides data analytics and allows customers to view and upload documents, whilst enabling users to tailor notifications, and provides a chat function where customers can interact with our operations team directly.”
When it comes to sustainability, Denholm Good Logistics has been driven by both internal motivation and customer requirements. “The Covid-19 pandemic altered our focus and the focus of our customers, but we are now seeing a growing concern again towards environmental responsibilities and initiatives,” Paul states. “We’ve developed a system that calculates the carbon emissions for our customers’ shipments across any mode of transport and from anywhere in the world.
“We have partnered with two companies to provide customers with two different solutions. Firstly, by taking the CO₂ number and providing customers with a quote to offset the emissions against UN sustainability goals via Climate Partner. Secondly, we have an API connection with one of the world’s largest providers of CO₂ calculations. This partnership allows us to automatically send routing information to allow the emissions to be calculated, enabling us to provide visibility across our customers’ supply chains of their Scope 3 emissions created from the physical shipment of their goods.
“We can then use this data to consult with customers about alternative modes of transport or potential routes that could reduce the environmental impact of their shipments,” he adds. “Sustainability is definitely a prominent topic in the majority of our conversations with customers, and we continue to enhance our own offering with Eco Vadis accreditation whilst currently working on ISO 14001 to sit alongside ISO 9001.”
With a rich heritage and extensive experience across two businesses, Denholm Good Logistics is sure to succeed as it embarks on a new journey as a single, harmonized entity. “We’re continuing to seamlessly integrate the logistics services and divisions across the Denholm Group, offering our customers a full end-to-end 3PL solution with owned assets. At the same time, we are edging deeper into the 4PL space with an increasing customer base,” Paul shares. “This means that customers can order from overseas, and we can handle everything from the point of origin to arrival, including the customs, any potential warehousing and storage, and the onward delivery, all through our own in-house teams. If customers have any out of gauge or oversized cargo, we also have a dedicated projects team providing a full end-to-end logistics service.
“We continue to focus on developing and retaining our people, securing top talent for the future, and advancing our offering in terms of technology, all of which allows us to deliver a service that we can be proud of and that delivers real value to our customers.
“We have ambitious targets for the future following the merger, we will not be sitting still that is for sure. It’s an exciting time to be part of the next chapter,” he concludes.