Founded in 1962 by Sir Clive Bourne, Seabourne quickly became a leading parcel delivery service in Europe. The company was famously started by a 17 year old Sir Clive from a telephone box near Shoreditch, with the vision of creating a truly independent logistics provider. Seabourne rapidly expanded, building depots across Europe, and earned the prestigious Queens Award for Industry in the UK on two occasions.
In the 1980s Seabourne acquired a freight company, closely followed by an international express courier operator, greatly expanding the range of services provided. The following decade, Seabourne sold Seabourne Express Parcels, allowing us to dedicate ourselves to freight and express courier operations.
More recently, Seabourne has expanded through further acquisition. This approach has enabled us to provide high levels of service and experience across the globe, in all areas of distribution. In 2008, Seabourne made the acquisition of Air Action Group, providing comprehensive and reliable service on road, sea and air freight, as well as courier and mail fulfilment. In the following year, Seabourne acquired leading South African business InXpress. This enabled our expansion into the growing South African market, and the reinforcement of our emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness.
Seabourne’s most recent expansion saw the acquisition of UK based Gazelle Couriers. Focussing on two revenue streams including same-day courier and 3PL services, this acquisition was critical to Seabourne’s objective of providing a broad range of services in order to meet all of our customers’ needs.
As well as focusing on the expansion of Seabourne, Sir Clive Bourne also dedicated a lot of time to community projects. The creation of Mossbourne Academy in 2007 was the beginning of an ongoing commitment to raising educational achievement in Hackney. Built on the Hackney Downs boys’ school, the academy has achieved Ofsted’s rating of ‘outstanding’, and has seen students achieve places in high ranking universities such as Cambridge. Lady Joy Bourne was involved in the planning of the school with Sir Clive Bourne, and still takes an active role in the schools development as a sponsor governor.
We have seen huge developments in the last five decades and plan to expand our operations further over the coming years, always striving to provide the highest level of service and tailored solutions to our customers.