25 years in the making

Our Story

Cardinal is the world's largest employee owned logistics business. The entrepreneurial spirit of the original Founders and the current management team combined with the innovative use of technology have been key components in our on-going success. This has positioned Cardinal as a leading light in the logistics sector, respected for transparency, innovation and our determination to deliver exceptional service and value.

We provide services for highly-engineered supply chain solutions, consolidation, contract logistics, 3PL, internet fulfilment, global forwarding and a range of other bespoke solutions.

We serve more than 6,000 clients with an integrated network serving over 500 ports and airports. The bedrock of our company is our people, always operating with a single-minded focus on customer service. Our clients work in various sectors including: manufacturing, retail, e-commerce, industrial, technology, aerospace and chemicals.

We’re passionate about helping our clients operate their supply chains more effectively. Equally important are our qualitative resources: our zero-failure mentality, our experience in every service we offer and our ability to provide integrated end-to-end supply chain solutions to businesses ranging from SME to large scale multinational entities.

Committed to our values

“For 25 years we’ve prioritised people over short-term profit. That approach has taken us from a £15,000 investment to the largest employee-owned logistics company in the world. Empowering people, whether they’re our clients, colleagues or partners, has always been our mission. We achieve it every single day.”

Brian Hay, CEO

“Our culture is at the heart of what we do. We only employ motivated and enthusiastic individuals that we know can deliver the best service to our clients. We train all of our employees in our Cardinal Academy so everyone understands the Cardinal culture and we believe this is what makes us stand out against the competition.”

Craig Poole, Managing Director

A multi award-winning business

We're proud that our committment to exceptional customer service and our desire to harness emerging technologies to innovate and transform our industry, has been reconised by our our peers and a number of Intenational award bodies.

Passionate to deliver more

We like to consider ourselves as the challenger brand within the logistics industry and feel we’ve only just started but we’re proud of what we’ve achieved so far:

Our Growth

At Cardinal, we like to do things differently. The multi-nationals are consolidating their operations but we believe our clients are served more effectively at a local level. To ensure we continue providing efficient and effective solutions for our clients, we’ve launched an active programme of branch office openings which currently includes London, Nottingham, Southampton and Felixstowe.

Our head office is located in Manchester, where the business operates from three sites all offering 3PL and Fulfilment services.

International Expansion

More recently we have continued our rapid expansion programme outside of the UK, further enhancing our integrated global network and infrastructure. Below are some of our International success stories.

Hong Kong

In 2014, we opened our Asian regional Head Office in Hong Kong. Our office overlooks the Port of Hong Kong and is heavily focused on the delivery of highly sophisticated supply chain solutions operated using Leda, our supply chain platform.

South Africa

Our office is located in Durban, in the heart of the shipping community and focuses largely on the management of our wholesale consolidation product from Asia and the Indian sub-continent into the south of Africa. In a relatively short-time, we have positioned ourselves as one of the region’s leading and trusted consolidators.

Ireland

Proudly located in the heart of Dublin, our business in Ireland has experienced rapid growth and despite being a relative newcomer to the market, is seen as a leading light. The business is focused on both the wholesale and retail sectors and continued to challenge conventional practice in being the first operator of its kind to offer online freight pricing.

Shanghai

Shanghai, on China’s central coast, is the country’s biggest city and a global financial hub. Our office opened in March 2017 and is already a key operational hub within our network.

Qingdao

Qingdao, in China’s eastern Shandong province, is a port city of skyscrapers, parks and beaches bordering the Yellow Sea and has been home to Cardinal since October 2017.

Ningbo

Ningbo, a major port and industrial hub in east China’s Zhejiang province, lies south of Shanghai on Hangzhou Bay and is the location of our most recent office opening in China, in February 2018.

Singapore

Singapore is a city state in south-east Asia. It is a thriving global financial hub and described as one of Asia's economic "tigers". Due to its unique geographical location Singapore has grown into one of the world's major transport hubs. We opened our Singapore office in 2019.

Shenzhen

Shenzhen, in southeastern China, is a modern metropolis that links Hong Kong to China’s mainland. The office is located in the Futian district which is the main financial hub in the Guangdong province. Our office opened in 2020 and gives us closer access to suppliers in the region and provides a platform for the management of import logistics.

Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City is the business and financial hub of Vietnam, and our new office here offers greater coverage and improved operational efficiencies across the South East Asia region.

View all global offices