Chief Executives and senior staff from 'rival' organisations such as Wincanton, Norbert Dentressangle and TDG have united together to celebrate their Corporate Membership of the industry's independent professional body, The Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport in the UK (CILT).
President of the Institute, Wincanton plc Chief Executive Graeme McFaull FCILT, presented the founding members of the Institute's new Platinum Corporate Membership with their commemorative plaques at the Institute's Corby headquarters last Friday.
He stressed how important it is for leading logistics and transport organisations to become corporate members to give vital support to their staff's development. 'Through membership of the corporate partnership scheme we get better quality businesses because we get better quality managers' he said.
Graeme highlighted how important the Institute's development programme is to companies such as Wincanton and emphasised companies needed to ensure their staff had time to give to Institute activities to develop them as managers.
'Employers need to demand professionalism,' said Graeme, and one benchmark of this is membership of the Institute. 'We need people joining as students and moving up to become Fellows.' he said.
'If two people apply for a job and one is a Fellow of the Institute and the other is not even a member, I guarantee who will get the job,' said Graeme.
Graeme stressed that logistics is a vibrant, dynamic and challenging career, and that the Institute has a vital role in ensuring it is as professional an industry as it needs to be. He gave a personal thanks on behalf of the industry to those companies who have become involved in the membership and signed up to it.
Corporate Members
Receiving plaques as members of the Institute's Platinum Corporate Membership scheme were representatives from:
Consilium
DE&S
Great Bear Distribution
KPMG
Norbert Dentressangle
Palletforce
SDI
Steria
TDG
Unipart
Wincanton
Zetes