Greig Roberts came to Australia almost twenty five years ago with nothing, and has built his logistics company into the country’s largest and most successful independent book services provider. His story highlights the value of curiosity and long-held connections as well as utilising the entrepreneurial spirit to grow an international business.
Greig originates from the UK and started his working life there forty years ago in the same industry he’s in today: freight forwarding as it was then known or logistics as is the current term.
An Australian partner of the freight-forwarding company Greig was working for in the UK offered him work with a company in Australia. As Greig recalls, “I took up the opportunity and within a couple of years, I’d established a niche within that company doing the freight forwarding for book publishers.”
While Greig was at the London Book Fair and approaching publishers seeking to handle their freight forwarding, most of them said, ‘No thanks, we’ve got this fantastic company called Publiship.’
The Publiship name kept coming up and eventually Greig felt compelled to investigate further. “I remember it vividly”, he says. “I phoned Publiship, who were based in Liverpool, and asked for the Managing Director, because I wanted to find out more. I got put through to this Liverpudlian sounding voice, and I picked it straight away; it was the same guy I’d met in Felixstowe five years prior who’d offered me a job! We met in Birmingham and struck a deal there and then.