Ravensden

Ravensden is a UK based family owned and operated company founded in 1975. Ravensden specializes in the supply of animal themed toys and gifts for the Zoo, Aquarium, leisure, museum and promotional markets across Europe.

Ravensden has been delivering their products to European clients without hassle for decades. Unfortunately, due to Brexit, their supply chain was disrupted. As with many UK companies, Ravensden’s existing UK based logistical partners were unable to provide a reliable service or offer a cross-dock facility for full trailers from the UK. Their usual fast delivery service was severely disrupted for the first quarter of 2021, and many nights sleep was lost by the Ravensden team trying to restore their usual service, and find a partner that they could work with to supply their clients based in the European Union.

Ravensden was introduced to the Holland International Distribution Council (HIDC) via the British Promotional Merchandise Association (https://www.bpma.co.uk/). HIDC was asked to provide supply chain advice and assistance in restructuring the supply chain for the post Brexit situation. The goal was to re-establish a dependable supply chain solution for deliveries to customers based in the European Union.

In February 2021, Ravensden and HIDC began discussing the supply chain issues that needed to be solved. Based on this information, combined with HIDC’s experience dealing with many UK companies facing Brexit supply chain issues we quickly established the best solution for Ravensden.

Based on the requirements from Ravensden, HIDC has suggested 5 potential logistics partners and 3 potential fiscal representatives to solve logistics and VAT related matters. After discussions and close examination of the logistics service providers, Ravensden chose Huisman Group as their European logistics partner.

 

Huisman Group

After two month of fruitless searching Jasper and the team at HIDC put us in contact with John and Ron at Huisman Group.  Within ten minutes of our initial discussion it was clear that we had found a logistics partner who knew how to take full trailers out of the UK and then to cross-dock to our clients across Europe.  We had known for a couple of months what we wanted to do but up until this point we had not been able to agree this solution with any of our existing logistical partners.  We achieved more in a day with John and Ron that we had with others in the previous two months !!

We shipped out our first trailer at the end of March and it was a real relief to be shipping out in bulk again despite the challenges of Brexit.

Eight months on we have shipped out 23 full trailers both of palletised goods which have been cross-docked to our clients across Europe, and individual carton orders which have been dropped into the DPD system in the Netherlands having been pre-labelled here in the UK.  Despite a few customs inspections which was to be expected, we have managed to provide the level of service that our clients across the European Union have come to expect.

I cannot thank John, Ron and the team at the Huisman Group enough for the level of customer service and speed of deliveries.  We are kept informed throughout the process of the trailer leaving us here in the UK to the orders being delivered to our clients.  The level of service is far better than anything that we have had from any of our partners in the past here in the UK.

HIDC

I cannot thank Jasper at HIDC enough for the help that he provided with getting our supply chain up and running again across the European Union.  After an initial introduction and conversation, he quickly identified a number of potential logistical service providers resulting in us partnering with the Huisman Group.

He has continued to provide us with impartial advice and given me introductions to a number of other companies within their network to assist with other areas of our business in the Netherlands.

 

Go to the Ravensden website