During the lockdown the Metro team had to adapt quickly to new ways of working and engaging with customers. Technology was the critical success factor.

IT Manager Aston Thames’ professional career began in accounting, but his passion for computing and information technology ultimately prevailed, with Aston making his career change into IT in 2000.

Joining Metro in 2016, Aston’s two decades of IT experience across multiple disciplines and technologies has been put to good use.

Aston has been a key member of the technical team that prepared and managed the migration of Metro Shipping systems to the ultra-secure cloud platform, that ensures the protection, resilience and availability of our data.

Metro’s journey to the cloud was in its infancy when Aston joined, beginning with the transfer of the business’ onsite email system and strengthening IT Security protocols with policies, controls, procedures and technologies, that Aston co-ordinates to protect all our cloud-based systems, data, and infrastructures.

As IT Manager, Aston responsibilities embrace the Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity processes that have been critical in optimising Metro’s operational capability throughout the epidemic and lockdown. 

Empowering our global team to continue to do their daily tasks while operating remotely and maintaining access to our operations systems, has ensured Metro’s service effectiveness and guaranteed the efficient maintenance of our customers’ supply chains.

‘’ Aligning our systems supports our business processes and ensures that our Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity and Risk Management planning keeps us agile, scalable and resilient, to continually support our customers. I am sure that, with the team that support me, we will continue to make this possible.’’
Aston Thames

The container ports and airports in the Middle East and Indian subcontinent are some of the busiest in the world. Their continuous growth underlines the strength of international trade enjoyed by both regions. 

The Middle East and Indian subcontinent generate around £80 billion of the United Kingdom’s international trade and is why Metro has been providing import and export services across both regions since our inception 40 years ago.

While both territories are key sourcing regions for many products, they are also key export markets, driven to some extent by extensive ‘Commonwealth’ connections and, in the case of the Middle East, significant demand for luxury brands and British brands.

The UK is actively seeking trade agreements with many countries across both regions and especially in those countries where it has strong commercial relationships, cultural and historic ties.

The Middle East accounts for £50 billion of the United Kingdom’s trade, which could rise sharply after Brexit, with the UK pursuing independent trade deals.

Attempts to draw up an EU free trade deal have faltered since negotiations began more than 20 years ago, so the UK will hope that its own attempts will prove more fruitful. 

Even without a free trade agreement, the Middle East represents an attractive market, with £30 billion worth of new opportunities annually for British businesses in defence, health care, medical devices and digital technologies.

We move cargo to and from the region, with regular sea and air services, operated n conjunction with our established partner network. 

Metro has competitive agreements with all the major alliances, across all primary ports and airports, to give our customers reliability and choice, which is especially important in the current environment of blank sailings. 

The core Metro verticals of retail and fashion, automotive, chemicals, industrial, and manufacturing are all key commodities in both regions, providing essential knowledge and experience in managing our clients supply chains. 

In addition, our excellent customer service teams and digital platform MVT enables our customers and their partners to gain much needed data, real time visibility, and an array of online management tools to closely manage their supply chains during times of service uncertainty.

Metro solutions sit in four areas of expertise – forwarding, supply chain, outsourcing, technology – but there are no barriers between these areas, with our personnel working in multiple area simultaneously, to better serve their clients.

Experienced freight forwarder Kerry Bate joined Metro in 2015, to strengthen the growing import ocean freight operations team.

Promoted to Import Supervisor early in 2017, Kerry also draws on air freight (import and export) experience, to support her team.

Kerry has focused very much in the retail sector, fast fashion and manufacturing vertical with Metro and has provided an invaluable skillset and experience in expanding and further developing this important business platform to our clients. Since joining Metro 5 years ago the import department has doubled in consignment throughput and is a significant part of the Metro ocean freight offering.

Laughing off accusations of ‘liking the sound of her own voice’ Kerry is passionate about communication, particularly with supply chain and outsourcing colleagues, in ensuring that the needs of their clients are always being met.

Kerry has been instrumental at further developing the import digital platforms with our overseas network, supplier base and directly customer facing ensuring visibility and milestone management is always achieved reliably and consistently.

Kerry is helping develop Metro’s younger team members with the NEXT GEN initiative and also supports Metro technology solutions, conducting internal and external training on the award-winning MVT supply chain management platform.