The story so far..............
George Baker is proud to have founded George Baker (Shipping) Ltd way back in 1982.
The first decade of business was a period of impressive growth as the company established branch offices in the Haven Ports of Felixstowe, Ipswich and Harwich. The eighties was an exciting time in the industry. The EC/EU maintained Customs controls on all its internal borders with a huge amount of import documentation needed to facilitate the clearance of endless queues of trucks arriving on the ferries from Europe. Also at this time, manually completed paper import entry documents were gradually giving way to electronic Customs declarations and George Baker and some of his employees were proud to play their part serving on various port committees during the implementation of ‘D.T.I.’ (Direct Trader Input of data to the Customs computer).
By the early 90’s George Baker (Shipping) Ltd had become well established, but final preparations were being made in Europe to completely remove the EC/EU borders. Customs clearance companies in ferry ports such as Harwich and Dover were about to suffer a massive setback as EC/EU clearance services would no longer be needed. The nineties were difficult but George Baker (Shipping) Ltd vowed to press on regardless, believing that its documentation services could be adapted and applied to the growing volumes of third country imports that continued to require Customs clearance.
Embracing the emerging commercialisation of the World Wide Web and recognising future benefits in relation to both operational efficiency and marketing opportunities the company invested in more sophisticated IT systems and combined the new technology with its traditional ‘old fashioned’ customer care to achieve the ultimate service levels. Boosted growth from 2000 onwards saw the company start to fulfil its ambition of widening its range of ‘in house’ services with the warehousing division in particular taking shape. Between 2005 and 2007 the company began to move away from its previously outsourced facilities.
Celebrating 25 years in business in February 2007, George introduced son David into the company to oversee the warehousing operation and long serving Nikki Farmer joined the board of directors as Company Secretary. A move to a new high profile premises within the port, incorporating new offices, warehouses and a distribution centre followed in 2009.
And so we reach the present day, 2011 has seen the launch of George Baker (Transport) Ltd, incorporated to provide an ‘in house’ container transportation arm and this project is off to an excellent start under the management of David and his team.
February 2012 will see the company celebrate its 30th birthday and George Baker (Shipping) Ltd remains under the original ownership of George and Libby Baker. However, plans are in place for when retirement beckons for the business to continue as a genuinely family run business under the guidance of David and his three sisters and we look forward to this exciting new era.
To be continued.........
