The best building designs and conversion work in the district were celebrated at the Quality of Place Awards on Thursday 1 October.
The annual awards ceremony returned for the fifth time and was held at the Council Chambers at Suffolk Coastal District Council.
The awards are a celebration of the effort being made by people across Suffolk Coastal to add to the quality of our environment by helping conserve historic buildings, create high quality of outstanding designs, or helped benefit the local landscape, nature, local community or community spirit.
Non Residential Category Winner was named as Maritime House – home of Felixstowe-based Maritime Transport, the largest privately-owned container transport business in the country.
The building opened last year and at the time Managing director John Williams was rightly proud of the rather opulent blue marble floor, the designer leather Egg chairs and a majestic, multi-coloured glass sculpture that hangs from the ceiling five floors up,
The striking décor is not what most people would expect to find at the head office of a haulage company. It is, however, a fitting monument to the achievements of the management team at Maritime, and a real Suffolk success story.
In the fourteen years since John acquired the business in 2001 turnover has increased from £18million to over £200m. The company now employs 1,750 people and owns 1,350 trucks responsible for an average of 13,000 jobs per week. Alongside a 17-acre site at Felixstowe Port, which houses the office building and a lorry park, the firm owns over 22 other depots around the country from Southampton to Liverpool, Tilbury to South Shields.
The sweeping five-storey curved building on Clickett Hill in Felixstowe is home to around 120 staff currently but with space to accommodate up to 250. It also has impressive accommodation for the drivers with plush washrooms and showers, and a well-equipped rest room with flat screen TV and wifi.
The story of Maritime Transport began in 2001 when John was a commercial director at the Hutchison Whampoa Group, the company that runs the Port of Felixstowe, and operations at Thamesport in Kent, Harwich and Rotterdam. Hutchison owned a transport company called Maritime Haulage with around 130 trucks, turning over £18m a year – they had five depots and were probably number six in the league of container transport companies at the time, but it wasn’t making any money at the time so they decided to sell it and cut their losses.
John saw an opportunity and acquired the company at just the right time, seeing seven years of compound growth thanks to the ‘China factor’.
This strategy put Maritime in a very good position when the recession came in 2008 and enabled it to make strides in the sector.
Maritime’s healthy position enabled it to purchase DHL Container Logistics, the container operation for parcel courier giant DHL, in 2010. The business at that time had a £50m turnover and also owned 17 acres of land at Felixstowe and six acres of freehold land in Trafford Park next to Manchester United’s stadium – both sites were crucial centres from which Maritime could build its business further.
The activities at Felixstowe are the company’s biggest operation – home to around 250 trucks, as well as a destination for many of their lorries coming from other depots around the country. Business based or coming through Felixstowe represents around 35-40% of Maritime’s turnover.
Cllr Tony Fryatt, Cabinet Member with responsibility for Planning, who was Chairman of the judging panel, said: “Since the inception of these awards in 2010, the awards have grown from strength to strength with more nominations than ever submitted this year.
“Once again, the awards have shone the spotlight on quality design and conservation in our area and this year there were some outstanding examples to choose from.
“These awards about recognising the quality of design and conservation in our area and I hope local people will take inspiration from this year’s entries.”
The awards were presented by Chairman, Susan Harvey. The judges this year were Fiona Cairns Director of the SPS as our Conservation Expert Judge, John Lamont Local Architect as our Design Expert Judge and David Crawford from the Felixstowe Society. The four category winners each received a certificate and a bronze Quality of Place plaque.
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