Martin Lowrey, National Operations Manager of TNT UK, gives the fascinating inside story on his company’s involvement with the recent donation of medical supplies to Macedonia:
“Although I’ve been with TNT for 29 years, this is the first time I’ve worked with Project Hope. When they approached us in April for help in getting the shipment of donated medical equipment and supplies to Macedonia, we knew straight away that it wasn’t suitable for delivery by our routine air freight service from Stansted to Liege in Belgium and then on to Macedonia. Due to the size and nature of the consignment – 28 pallets totalling 40m3 – we decided it needed a dedicated vehicle to deliver all the goods by road in a single shipment.”
“As the shipment was going outside the EU, we also had to make sure that all the paperwork was completed for the customs authorities in the EU and the receiving country. This meant ensuring that the classifications, or commodity codes, of all the different items in the consignment were entered correctly so that there no issues at any border crossing. In fact, at TNT we had 3 members of our UK customs team and 3 people in our European customs department working on this to make sure that the customs declarations were 100% accurate.”
It actually took TNT over a month to complete delivery of the shipment, which went from Project Hope’s warehouse in Essex, to TNT in Northampton where it was stored while the paperwork was completed. Having been transported by road to Macedonia, there was a further delay for a week while the appropriate member of staff at the Ministry of Health was contacted to accept the delivery.
Martin added: “As this was not a routine delivery for TNT, we had a special project team working on it, which included our UK service quality manager, the hub manager, road line haul manager, the lorry driver and the customs team already mentioned.”
“TNT’s CEO, Peter Bakker, and our UK Managing Director Tom Bell are both passionate about our company’s Corporate Responsibility. For example, TNT regularly assists the World Food Programme with transport and in the UK are the principal supporter of the British and Irish Rugby charity, The Wooden Spoon Society. However, working on this shipment for Project Hope gave me the opportunity to see first-hand how important these donations are for healthcare services in countries which are less developed than the UK, and to understand what a difference they make to the work of the hospital staff and the lives of the patients.”
For more about Project Hope’s work in Macedonia, see ‘Where We Help’
For more about TNT's Corporate Responsibility Strategy, click here.
