Profile: Carlton Forest 3PL
A
motortransport.co.uk
Step changes, quicker turns
dam Jones laughs as he tells MT how he doubled the size of Carlton Forest 3PL in the space of 10 weeks during March and April. “It’s bonkers really!” Formerly with DHL Supply Chain, he only joined the East Midlands-based logistics firm in February, but has quickly taken warehouse space to over 1 million sq ft after acquiring three new sites at Bawtry Park near Doncaster. He’s also found time to sign several major new contracts and is aiming to boost turnover from £8m to £15m in the next 12 months. “It’s been a great success story,” he says. “For someone at Carlton’s level, it’s a huge achievement. We’ve caught people off guard. We’re attracting bigger, more corporate
Since joining East Midlands-based Carlton Forest 3PL as MD back in February, Adam Jones has vastly expanded warehousing space and signed a string of lucrative contracts. Tim Wallace gets the full story on his ambitious growth strategy customers and people who want to work with us. It’s really exciting. “As soon as news got out that I was coming in as MD the phone was ringing off the hook with people wanting to support me and say we could do some business. It’s ballooned, I couldn’t have asked for a better start.” The new sites join an existing portfolio of South Yorkshire warehouses including 125,000sq ft at Hellaby and 170,000sq ft in Barnsley, plus 250,000sq ft at its base in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. Such rapid expansion has also created new jobs and catapulted the company onto the industry radar. So who exactly are Carlton Forest 3PL, and how is all this investment being funded? And how far can such an ambitious growth strategy take it?
The story so far
SMART MOVE: The new Bawtry Park sites were being eyed by rivals
32 MotorTransport
A privately owned subsidiary of the Carlton Forest Group, the firm was launched in the 1970s by pig and cattle farmer John Pepper. His son Mark took over in the 1990s and turned it into a typical 3PL with services including warehousing, pick and pack, courier management and pallet networking. Over the last 10 years, growth has accelerated to a point in 2015 where the company took the step-change of hiring a board of directors, quickly increasing turnover from £1m to £8m last year. But a different kind of skill set was needed to go further. And that’s where ➜ 34 12.7.21
