The British International Freight Association (BIFA) has strengthened its training team with the appointment of Carri Marais as trainer – freight and customs procedures.

Carl Hobbis, an executive director at BIFA, who also has overall responsibility for the trade association's training activities, says that 2022 was another excellent year for BIFA’s training courses and programmes, and it is anticipating demand for them to remain high.

Carri Marais, trainer for freight and customs procedures at BIFA

“With the appointment of another full-time trainer to our training delivery team, we now have a four-strong team based in Yorkshire, Manchester, Birmingham and Heathrow, which will enable us to deliver more training days for our members during 2023.”

Carri, who joins BIFA from DB Schenker Road Freight, will be based in South Yorkshire, and has over 25 years of experience in freight forwarding and logistics, including the management of import and export consignments across all modes, team building and training, internal sales, customs, customer service and key account management, as well as documentation.

Prior to DB Schenker Road Freight, she worked at UPS-SCS for many years, as well as IFE Global Logistics.

Hobbis added: “It is a pleasure to welcome Carri to the team that delivers our freight and customs training programmes, which go from strength to strength and are generally seen as the most engaging in the industry.”

BIFA director general, Steve Parker adds: “Brexit, the switch from CHIEF to CDS, and the development of a relevant international freight forwarding specialist apprenticeship, are among a number of issues that have led to a significant increase in the demand for our training programmes. Carri's appointment strengthens the team and helps to ensure that we have the resources in place to meet demand.”