A Message From The CEO
I’m delighted to announce that Logistics UK is the new name for FTA. I’d like to give you a bit more information about the drivers behind the change, and why this continued evolution in our name will help us to achieve even more for our members.
It is important to note that we have not changed our focus, or the important services, support and advice that we provide to members. This is a natural progression in our name, which has been under way for the past few years.
Evolving our name is not something that I or the Board take lightly, but it’s something that we believe is essential if FTA is to continue to grow and achieve more for its members in a fast-changing world.
I’m really proud of what FTA has achieved over the years, and while we provide a broad range of high-quality services to the industry, the core of what we do is representation of our members’ interests through effective lobbying and negotiation with policy makers. Our change of name is designed solely to support and strengthen the many policy wins we already achieve on behalf of our members.
To understand why we needed to continue evolving our name, it’s important to understand how we achieve those policy wins. FTA is strong because of its size and scale, and because we already represent all of Logistics, a very large sector critical to the success of UK Plc. Our breadth, size and scale is unique, and gives us strength and depth in expertise across important issues in all of the sectors we represent. Increasingly, policymakers and the media look to consult with organisations which can represent the whole sector. This has been especially important, and continues to be so, in our discussions around Brexit and COVID-19. Our voice in the media is also critical to our engagement with policy makers – as we are not always telling Government what they want to hear! Having a strong public voice adds great weight to the policy outcomes we achieve for members.
And we are not alone in recognising that the Logistics industry of the future will be very different from the one we all operate in today. The creation of a new Ministerial role, Minister of State for the Future of Transport, to oversee and shape the development of the Logistics sector, directly acknowledged the interconnectedness of supply chains. This is another example of how the world around us is changing, and why evolving our name now will help strengthen our voice and our influence. Government representatives are due to visit the Innovation and Technology in Transport Expo which will be held at Farnborough on 11 and 12 May 2021, a major new event in the Logistics calendar, where FTA has brought together the biggest flagship conference programme in the sector. It’s free to attend, so I would encourage you to register at www.itthub.co.uk
We have been really successful over the past couple of years in raising our media profile, and achieving the long list of policy wins which that profile has helped to secure. That’s testament to the hard work of the team, but also to the changes in language and logo that have already been positioning us as Leading UK Logistics. Most news programmes describe us as “FTA, the organisation that represents all of Logistics in the UK.” This has been a very natural and frictionless evolution for FTA, and our latest change of name will continue that journey. We’ve worked hard to take that space, and our media coverage and influence is growing, but sometimes our name does not help and can get in the way. While we are not changing what we do or who we represent, a more descriptive and impactful name will help important stakeholders and influencers outside the industry take more notice of us and understand what we do
FTA is really well known and respected in the industry, but increasingly it’s the people outside our sector, like politicians, young people (who may never have considered careers in our sector), and journalists who will be critical to us achieving even more for members. It is vital in today’s fast paced media environment that those stakeholders quickly understand who we are and what we do. We need to continue to raise our voice in the media, to give us extra strength with government, and our name is an important part of achieving that. Rest assured that FTA itself will not change - we will continue to provide the excellent services, support and advice that our members depend on - but we will also have a stronger voice with media and policy makers and achieve even more policy wins for members.
It’s also important to note that FTA gets its strength from representing members from right across the industry. While this is not the main reason for our change of name, the word freight often does not really represent what our members in vans, construction, utilities, public sector, 3PLs and passenger transport actually do.
Logistics UK will carry forward the legacy of FTA as a great organisation with a long and proud history, and these changes are all about protecting our heritage, and ultimately achieving even more for our members by strengthening our voice and increasing our relevance in a fast-changing world.
I really hope that you share my enthusiasm for what FTA has achieved, the leading position we occupy in the industry, and the great opportunity we have to achieve even more for members as Logistics UK in the months and years to come.
