MORE than 100 staff at an Ipswich haulage firm have been transferred to a Felixstowe company after a multi-million pound deal.Felixstowe-based nationwide road transport company Hanbury Davies Containers has bought the Ipswich port haulage operations of DFDS Transport.

By Richard Cornwell

By RICHARD CORNWELL, Felixstowe editor

richard.cornwell@eveningstar.co.uk

MORE than 100 staff at an Ipswich haulage firm have been transferred to a Felixstowe company after a multi-million pound deal.

Felixstowe-based nationwide road transport company, Hanbury Davies Containers, has bought the Ipswich port haulage operations of DFDS Transport.

Exact details of the deal are not being revealed but Hanbury Davies says it will enable it to put in place "economies of scale".

DFDS Transport, which has 105 staff and 80 vehicles, had been looking to sell the business, a stand-alone operation serving Ipswich port, for some time.

Hanbury Davies was set up three years ago by multi-millionaire, Glyn Davies, and two colleagues, Ian Wilson and Philip West.

Mr Davies, who is regularly mentioned in the annual national 'Rich List', was co-founder of the Russell Davies Group transport empire, which was sold in 1995 to Securicor for £57.7 million.

When Mr Davies and brother in law, Ron Davies, founded their road haulage business in 1974, the staff numbered just four. When they sold the group it was the largest privately owned transport company in the UK with a workforce of more than 1,400 with an annual turnover of £110m.

Hanbury Davies said the DFDS business would complement its own and showed the firm's commitment to the port-based maritime haulage industry, a difficult market in which to operate.

Hanbury Davies has operation centres in Walton Avenue, Felixstowe, and at the ports of Southampton, Tilbury, Hull, Teesport, and Thamesport on the Isle of Grain. It has an annual turnover of £43 million and more than 450 trucks.