Where did we start?
In the early part of the last century the Langdons were farmers and trappers in West Somerset. The family was led by the formidable Bessie Langdon who built up a successful business trading in rabbit, poultry and egg products. In 1955 the company diversified into road haulage when Tone Vale Transport was formed.
Philip Langdon along with his brother William developed the road haulage business in the late 50's and 60's. During this period the company diversified into refrigerated haulage by acquiring a company trading as Taunton Meat Haulage. By the early 1970's Langdons interests included warehousing and cold storage as well as the two growing haulage firms and a Mercedes-Benz car dealership.
William Langdon died in 1967 but Philip Langdon continued developing the business until 1974 when he sold out to TKM Ltd who named the group of companies they had bought as "Langdon Industries Ltd". Philip Langdon was retained as managing director and the company prospered under its new owners throughout the remainder of the 70's.
By 1980 Philip Langdon was nearing retirement and wanted to become the part-time Chairman so TKM appointed Mike Donoghue as managing director in that year- a position he held from then until he became Chairman in 2007. In 1981 the company moved to a new site at Walford Cross (Taunton) and in 1983 Mr Langdon retired from the business.
In 1985 TKM decided to sell all their transport subsidiaries and the former directors led by Mike Donoghue took the opportunity to buy the company, which was achieved in April 1986. It was decided at that time to retain the Langdon trading name. The company image was however completely re-designed and the now familiar arrow trademark emerged from that process.
In August 1987 Langdons opened a Truckstop on the Walford Cross site to cater for travelling drivers. This business traded very successfully until it was demolished to make way for the 1997/98 chill store extension.
Towards the end of 1989 Gerber Foods Soft Drinks Ltd. at Bridgwater began producing chilled fruit juice and appointed Langdons as their transport contractor. We did not realise it at the time but this was the beginning of a series of events which would change the company beyond recognition. Having moved out of our cold stores in Bristol due to redevelopment, in 1993 we decided to convert part of the warehouse at Walford Cross to a chill store to accommodate Gerber's chilled fruit juices. In 1994 Gerber moved in and Langdons entered into the world of storage, order picking and final delivery JIT (just in time).
By 1995 we had fully converted the warehouse to chill and needed more space and so a further 25,000 square feet of chill space was provided by a new building, Chill 3, connected to the existing warehouse in 1996.
During 1997 controlled temperature storage and distribution was growing rapidly whilst the company's ambient operations were in decline - partly as a result of the sale of the Taunton Cider Company which had been a major local customer. For most of the first half of that year we were negotiating with Procter and Gamble for the UK logistics contract associated with their new chilled drink "Sunny Delight" which was to be packed by Gerber on their Bridgwater site. By July we knew we had the contract so we closed down the General Haulage operation in order to specialise in the growth area of controlled temperature storage and distribution.
With the P & G contract signed, the day after planning was approved the contractors moved in to begin demolishing the Truckstop and associated buildings to make way for a 5000 pallet chill store dedicated to Procter and Gamble. This new facility was completed just in time for the "Sunny Delight" UK launch in March 1998.
Due to the success of Sunny Delight P & G asked Langdons to provide additional chill storage capacity. In response to this request we built a new 10,000 pallet chill store at Bridgwater dedicated to P&G which opened in June 1999.
Within a year of the opening, sales of "Sunny Delight" were in steep decline and the Bridgwater depot became a shared user facility and the Gerber chilled storage operation moved from Walford Cross to Bridgwater.
In early 2002 our trading partner Tom Granby (Liverpool) Ltd was sold to DBC Foodservice. Shortly after that in October 2002 their transport only customers were transferred to Langdons and we took over the entire operation at Luton and transport operations at Liverpool.
In October 2003 we opened a new 2000 pallet capacity mobile racking freezer - built within the Chill store at Bridgwater. This was part of the conversion of storage at Bridgwater from dedicated to shared-user.
Chillnet has continued to grow rapidly over recent years. Peterborough depot opened in November 2000 and Redditch in August 2004.
One of our trading partners in the Chillnet operation had been Nagel Logistics of Dover. The Nagel Group wanted to expand in the UK and the directors were looking for an exit strategy.
Consequently on the 26th October 2004 the company was sold to the Nagel Group, based in Versmold, Germany. Under the terms of the deal the original directors were required to stay with the company for a period of up to five years.
In late 2005 the Nagel Group conducted a review of their UK management structure and the outcome of that process was that the UK operations previously managed by Nagel Logistics (UK) Ltd. (NLUK) were transferred to Langdons' management on February 1st 2006.
NLUK is continuing to manage all international movements in and out of the UK and Ireland and maintains offices at Dover, but the Dover depot, UK transport and the storage operation at Redditch were transferred to Langdons.
During 2006 Gerber Juice started building a new factory at Express Park, on the northern outskirts of Bridgwater. As part of that development a new chilled store was constructed alongside the new factory and towards the end of 2006 Gerber's chilled juice logistics operation transferred to Express Park from the Showground Road depot. The chill store is managed by Langdons under a five year contract and we continue to undertake most of their transport movements for chilled juices.
As a result of this, Langdons decided to consolidate operations at the Bridgwater depot. In order to accommodate the combined staff and operations a new two storey Head Office building was constructed together with another 2000 pallet frozen storage facility within the existing building. The move to Bridgwater was completed in March 2007 and the original Walford Cross depot was sold to a property developer in July 2007.
In January 2007 Arran Osman was promoted to managing director and Mike Donoghue took up the position of part-time Chairman.
In February 2008 DBC decided to move the Rail Gourmet operation from the Liverpool site and as a result Langdons were able to purchase the long leasehold at the depot and now have full control of operations at that location.
At the end of 2008 Mike Donoghue retired and Simon Holder took over the position of Company Chairman.
At the beginning of February 2009 we opened a depot in Glasgow. Identical to the arrangements at Luton and Peterborough, the operation is situated on the TDG site just off the M8 in the Shieldhall region of the city.
Since the early 2000's we had worked with a Chillnet partner covering Yorkshire, Humberside and the North-East. During 2009 it was decided to end that partnership and in late January 2010 our latest depot, situated just off the M1 near Barnsley was opened which has now taken over coverage of the region. We now serve the whole of the UK with a network of nine depots.
The rented depot at Redditch was not ideal for purpose with limited HGV parking and inadequate pallet throughput capacity. After a fruitless lengthy search for suitable alternative premises in the area it was decided to purchase a disused factory and associated land in the Park Farm district of Redditch, demolish the old factory and build a new depot on the site.
Demolition of the factory commenced in December 2010, although the two storey office block alongside the factory was retained and refurbished. The new depot includes a total of around 5000 pallet storage spaces (frozen and chilled) and 16 loading bays plus on-site fuel storage.
Representing a total investment of nearly £9M, the new depot opened in September 2011.
Rob Swindells
Marketing Consultant
November 2011