European road freight specialists Ital Logistics has celebrated its 15th anniversary with the news that its rapid growth of recent years is continuing and that more expansion is planned.

Ital Logistics was founded in August 2000, initially to offer road freight transport services to and from Italy, and its portfolio quickly increased to include similar road freight services to and from Spain, Portugal, and Greece.

As it grew, the company began offering road freight forwarding services throughout Western, Central and Eastern Europe and, following customer demand, started to provide maritime and air freight services worldwide.

Key to the company’s success has been its efficiency, its dedicated personnel and its honest and straight-forward business model.

Ital loads in excess of 40 export and import trailers every week, carrying a wide range of materials for all industry sectors.

Twenty five per cent of goods carried by the company are for the chemical sector, with a key specialism in the niche area of dangerous goods.

The company, which is based in Heywood, in North West England, has, as a result, seen its turnover increase from £6.3m three years ago to an expected £10m this year,

Much of this growth has come in its Iberian markets, which are now equalling its Italian service in terms of volume and profitability.

Phil Denton, founder and managing director, said: “The key to what we do is simplicity and honesty. We do not dress up our services in confusing jargon. Our customers know exactly what we do and how we do it.

“The ethos of Ital Logistics, and mine throughout my freight career, has always been to provide a quality, reliable and personalised service, delivered with openness, honesty and integrity.

“From the beginning this has always been our guiding philosophy, irrespective of client size or status.

“We are also never frightened of communicating bad news when things go awry. Good communication is fundamental in developing good relationships with your clients and is something that we pride ourselves in delivering.

“I believe that our approach is the reason that we have continued to grow steadily and why we have continued to maintain and increase our client base.

“We continued growing during the post-banking crash era in 2008, whilst other companies in the sector were either cutting back on marketing or disappearing altogether. In fact, we continued to spend money on advertising and employed new sales people during this period.”

The approach worked and Ital, which now employs 31 people, moved to its current purpose-built premises at Heywood in December 2014, having out-grown its shared facility in Sharston.

Occupying 1.5 acres, their new facility comprises 16,000ft of warehousing and a yard area of 22,000ft2 which allows multiple vehicles on-site, ready for loading and unloading, at any one time.

Keeping the site safe is 24/7 manned security including automatic number plate recognition, CCTV, access and intruder systems.

Phil said: “Investing in the move to Heywood has provided us with a platform to enable further growth as we enter the next chapter of the company’s journey.

“It has been an exciting time and with many new irons in the fire we are confident that our presence within our core markets and within the chemical sector will continue to grow.

“In addition to our core geographical areas of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece, we are constantly being approached to offer more European services. The next thing on the horizon is Southern France, currently being managed en route to Spain, but it is looking very likely that this will become a solid service in its own right.

“Whilst our ‘specialist subject’ may be the carriage of dangerous goods, we move freight of all kinds. In the last 2 years we have started to become involved in the movement of waste metals to Italy, which is something else which we are keen to pursue and introduce waste services to our other core markets.

“And in parting, I should also mention temperature controlled transport in dual temperature vehicles providing services to the pharmaceutical industry.

You can contact Ital Logistics at 01706 248 006 (sales) and via www.ital-logistics.com