Goldstar Heathrow comes to Glasgow

Air freight specialist haulier Goldstar Heathrow has opened a depot in Glasgow and is completing the consolidation of its three depots around the London as part of a restructure and expansion of its business.

The Glasgow depot,10,000 ft² located near the airport in the city, was set up by Goldstar to support its biggest customer in the area. Its first two weeks of trading has “already taken a lot of cost out of the business” according to MD Charlie Fulk.

“It was already our plan to build up our network,” Fulk told Motortransport.co.uk. “Most of our customers are freight forwarders, and the majority of our largest customers have depots in Glasgow.”

At the same time Goldstar is moving into a 2.5 acre site in Colnbrook near Heathrow airport and out of its three locations in the south-east. This will see all of its warehousing, office space and vehicle workshop facilities consolidated on the one site. The operating centre is set to be up and running next month.

Growth period

Goldstar has seen five years of consecutive turnover and pre-tax profit growth, culminating in £11.7m of turnover and £892,490 of pre-tax profit as of 31 March 2012. However, Falk is cautious about the market prospects, despite the expansion of its network.

“Margins are tight and trading conditions are tough but there is quite a lot of opportunity,” he said.

Rounding out a spate of changes, Goldstar will take delivery of 45 new Mercedes-Benz Actros 6x2 Euro-5 units as part of a refresh of its fleet that will see it become entirely Mercedes-Benz.

Faulk said the decision was made as it wanted to run its fleet on the MB FleetBoard telematics system.