Page 14 - Food & Drink Magazine March 2021

COVER STORY
A cool boss can take the heat
Third-generation transport company FoodBoss Transport has been delivering food products across Australia for 70 years. When looking to expand its temperature- controlled fleet, owner Ian Gibson turned to Schmitz Cargobull. Kim Berry writes.
FOODBOSS Transport started three generations ago as Fordcraft Fresh Logistics and is now run by the three sons of founder Laurie Gibson.
Seventy years after Laurie began collecting milk from the farm gate for the Nepean Milk Depot, Robert, Graham and Ian now run a business that criss-crosses the continent.
Ian Gibson told Food & Drink Business it is the sense of history and how hard the family has worked that is most rewarding.
“Seeing one of our trucks out of the road with our logo on it, I get a bit of a kick from that as well,” he says.
In 2010, Fordcraft Fresh Logistics acquired FoodBoss Cold Storage to develop a fully integrated cold logistic service.
The two companies became
FoodBoss Transport and over the last decade it has grown into a refrigerated logistics and cold storage specialist.
Meanwhile, in October 2019, truck and trailer specialist Schmitz Cargobull opened its new assembly facility in Noble Park, Victoria. Since then, it has delivered more than 80 refrigerated vans from the site.
TAKING ON THE HEAT
Schmitz Cargobull managing director Les Lange says the move allowed the company to expand its product offering, but it is the refrigerated range that sets it apart.
“Our Ferroplast Refrigerated Trailers have thermal advantage over our competitors because of their NX17 high density polyurethane hard foam
insulation. Our 125-millimetre insulated roof and unique box design with no thermal bridges create premium conditions for refrigerated and fresh produce logistics,” Lange says.
Gibson agrees, recalling a delivery to Lightning Ridge in far west New South Wales.
“It was forty-three degrees outside and minus twenty inside the box, so a sixty-degree difference and it held its temperature. The walls are only about an inch-and-a-half thick but are very effective.
“The thermal qualities and the fridge unit are equally important, but if the thermals stand up in an extreme climate like that, then the fridge doesn’t have to work so hard. The result in that example was exceptional,” he says.
14 | Food&Drink business | March 2021 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au