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Astran gets a chance to live in the future
Page 13
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KENT-BASED John Seymour Transport has bought pioneering trucking company Astran Cargo Services in a bid to penetrate markets in Europe and the Middle East.
Hugh Thompson, owner of the Maidstone firm, says he is "really proud" to be associated with Astran,which became a household name in the seventies following a BBC series.
"I genuinely feel it's got a huge amount of potential — it's a fantastic name in the industry," he says. "They have got good old fashioned expertise."
The new owners hope to market Astran as a "unique multi-modal freight forwarder" and exploit the opportunities arising from it.
"It's been a bit sleepy in the last few years," Thompson explains. "It lives on past glories. It does that very well, but the world moves on. Sea freight is vastly, vastly cheaper than overland trucking. It's slower, but it's a big issue with people. We need to be more in the market place for people who don't want to move goods so sensitively," he adds.
Thompson adds that the two firms will run as separate entities and he promises there will be no redundancies.