Moving Charles and Diana’s wedding presents, or transporting a Spitfire into the Imperial War Museum… it’s all in a day’s work for the team at Abels

September 2020

What a pleasure it was to catch up with Phil Pertoldi, the Chairman at Abels in the UK, and former Chairman of the Harmony Relocation Supervisory Board, to find out about the family run removals and storage business set in Suffolk in the heart of the British countryside. 

What’s it like to work at Abels?

Well, we’re a family business, and that shines through in terms of our company culture. We want our people to like what they do; this means that our staff are happy at work. Having happy employees means we have happy customers.

Tell me about the Abels, the History, the key people in your organisation

At Abels, we are so proud of our unique history because it’s what makes us different. The company’s founder, Noel Abel, was an auctioneer here in the rural county of Norfolk in the east of England. As he sold things in his auction house, more and more of his customers would ask if he could deliver the furniture that they had purchased and so in 1962, he set up ‘Safe Removals’, and by 1971, Noel’s son Tony had joined the business and we were renamed ‘Abels’. We built up a strong workforce who trained with us on apprenticeships from the age of 16, and our people and the relationships that we built are still our most important asset today and the thing that sets us apart.

We have had a rich history over the past 58 years, with each part contributing to where we are today. We have worked for the British Military moving household goods of forces personnel into Europe, and we provided services for the Crown Suppliers for several years from an operation we set up in Oxfordshire. In 1988 we were awarded the Royal Warrant by Her Majesty the Queen for removal & storage services. For those outside of the UK that don’t know what this means, it’s a mark of recognition for companies that have supplied services to the Royal Households in Britain; it’s a real privilege and honour to have been awarded the accolade. The Crown Suppliers contract meant delivering office goods to and from any government agency, from prisons to the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street. The most exciting thing we did for the Royal Household was probably moving Charles and Diana, the Prince and Princess of Wales’ wedding presents from Buckingham Palace and Clarence House into their new home in Gloucestershire.

We also used to do a lot of work for the retailer Marks & Spencer delivering their new furniture sales and we built the business up to manage all of the M&S furniture deliveries and returns, exceeding over 100,000 units per annum. Items obtained through the Noel Abel auction house, together with the returned new furniture from M&S was used to set up our in-house training school which is still in operation, where people in the moving industry can come to learn the trade of packing and unpacking household goods. It also allowed us to be the first moving company to attain the Investors in People standard in 1995.

Over the years, we have also worked with some other really big British brands such as John Lewis and Whitbread Hotels.

Since 2015, we’ve been delivering new household and personal effects that we store ready to be installed into show homes or leased accommodation in London apartments. Everything is planned by an interior designer and the homes include everything that your typical home requires. We deliver for assembly beds, wardrobes… almost anything you can think of! We have also made deliveries for some very sizeable villas in mainland Europe where the décor and all of the contents are designed and coordinated by an interior designer. The homes look like works of art when they’re completed.

We’re really proud to be a longstanding member of the Harmony Relocation Network, joining in 1993 and we’re ISO9001, 14001 and 45001 certified and members of FIDI with Faim plus status. We think it’s important to constantly monitor what we do to ensure that we rely on our strong roots but also evolve and change as our industry colleagues and competitors do.

And tell me a bit more about Abels today?

Today, our head office is located in Brandon, Suffolk which is just north of Cambridge and we have offices and storage facilities in six locations spread over the South and East of England as part of the AGM Group. We have the training school that we purpose built in 1988 in the warehouse facility at Brandon.

I’m the Chairman, but we’re still a family business through and through. My wife is part of the busines and our son Neil, is the General Manager. Our daughter Helen is also part of the team and the other key people are sales director Kavan McCullagh who has advanced over the years from trainee on the vehicles, Marie Neave, the International sales manager, and Diane Cox heading up the move management team. Operations are run by two ex trainees David Potter and Darryl Browne, and our systems are managed by Joe Dods who has been with us for over 20 years since he graduated from university.

We provide domestic and international household goods moving & storage services and import customs clearance services via our customs bonded facility. A significant part of what we do is also new furniture deliveries and holding the client’s stock in our stores, whilst not forgetting we also carry out office relocations.

How has the Covid-19 situation affected your organisation and what have you been doing since the lockdown period began?

The UK went into lockdown like much of the rest of the world at the end of March, but we had a lot of customers who had booked moves and who were all ready to go. We had signed contracts with them and we didn’t want to let them down. So we talked to our crews to ask if they would be prepared to carry out the moves that were booked over the following two weeks, and we spoke to all of our customers to find out about their personal situations. Some of them chose to delay their moves, but many were just waiting for delivery so the prospect of that delivery not happening for many months was very distressing. We therefore continued to work for two more weeks on a reducing scale to complete all of the moves that just couldn’t wait, and then we moved into a total lockdown phase at the beginning of April. Imports were still arriving of course, so we had two people still working in our warehouses, and because there were only two of them, it was an environment where they could easily remain at a safe distance from each other so they were both happy to continue to work throughout. Managers mainly worked from home with planned office visits. Our office staff and crews started to come back into work from the beginning of May when the UK Government allowed removals to start happening again, but we have been flexible with our staff and have allowed them to decide what is right for them based on their personal and family situations and health considerations. Of course, we have made sure that everyone, staff and customers alike, has the correct protective equipment to ensure that they are safe.

Throughout lockdown, all of our surveys were carried out virtually, and we’ve continued to do this for most of our clients. Customers have time to review the survey in detail afterwards, and we find it’s actually a better service in many ways, though some moves and customers need that personal touch of a home visit and that is now being performed under strict Covid process and with protective equipment to safeguard customers and our staff.

Tell me about some unusual things that you have moved

Well there have been so many things, perhaps I should start with planes! We moved a Concorde Rolls Royce engine and undercarriage with other memorabilia to El Paso, Texas, and Spitfires into the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, Cambridgeshire as well as to New Zealand. We also moved a Messerschmitt German WW2 plane as well as a British Hurricane fighter.

We’ve moved cars to make your mouth water, but taking a Rolls Royce Phantom to Monte Carlo inside one of our vehicles proved a new challenge. It had been made bullet and bomb proof. The security driver had to go with us on-board with our two drivers and we could only rest overnight in a secure compound. The car was a tight fit inside our vehicle and extremely heavy, but the mission was successfully accomplished.

When carrying out a large house move survey, the cellar revealed a collection of over 5000 wine bottles which had to be very carefully packed and moved under controlled temperatures to the new home. We also moved a ￡4.5 million china collection that had to be photographed, inventoried, packed and stored for 12 months whilst there was building work next door. It was feared that the vibrations could cause damage to the collection. These major moves certainly gave us a few sleepless nights!

Our largest move though, was 981 radio transmitter stations consisting of over 360,000 components that each had to go to an individual site throughout the forests of Indonesia where access was normally by canoe only. All parts had to be consolidated in our warehouse, catalogued, pre-inspected by customs and then safely packed for the arduous journey to their destinations, all without losing a single item.

Does Abels get involved in any charity or support any community projects?

Yes, we have been involved in many interesting projects in recent years. For anyone familiar with UK television, we were involved in supplying pallets and providing practical labouring assistance for the ‘DIY SOS’ programme that involved creating the roof top garden at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for children. We have also been involved in the ’60 Minute Makeover’ where a deserving member of the public has their home redecorated in 60 minutes. We managed the furniture removals on several series’, and our crews would also help with the painting and decorating. It was great fun!

We work with a lot of other charities collecting and repairing furniture that customers don’t want and donating it, or selling it and giving the money to charities. Helen in our office also runs a sweet shop at the head office and we donate the profits to charity. This is a big hit with the team! We support cancer charities and the East Anglian Air Ambulance Service. Unwanted non-perishable food from customers relocating especially overseas is donated to local foodbanks.

In terms of recycling, we also supply used boxes and cartons to the local foodbank for the Christmas food boxes appeal. They use a lot of boxes, so we store them and keep them until the Christmas period.

You have a selection of vintage and interesting moving vehicles. Is that right?

Yes, we have a range of vehicles and we take them to shows and take part in events. Our oldest is an 1896 horse-drawn removal ‘pantechnicon’ that was uniquely driven by three shire horses abreast. We have a 1941 Bedford truck that was used during WW2, and several others.

We take part in the Sotheby’s Veteran Car Run in late October each year where over 500 veteran cars, all dating back to before 1905, drive from London to Brighton. The event starts on Regent Street in London on Saturday with a display of vehicles across all ages and it’s the largest free to view motor show in the world, so we take our vehicles down too. On the Sunday it’s a very early start to collect all of the luggage from the London hotels for those taking part in the run and we transport it to Brighton, because many of the cars have no space for their luggage! It allows the Abels team to enjoy a very hard-working piece of PR that gains us a feeling of pride as well as recognition for giving something back to the community we serve. All in a very long weekend!

Contact Details- Abels

T: +44 1842 816600 || E: [email protected] || W: https://www.abels.co.uk/

LinkedIn: https://www.dhirubhai.net/company/abels-moving-services/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/abelsmoving

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AbelsMovingServices/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abelsmovingservices/

?Contact- Harmony Relocation Network

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