‘Brexit has been a phenomenal gift for my business’

Importers and exporters are regularly cited as being among business’s biggest Brexit losers. They often complain about the added complexity and cost of international trade since the UK left the EU. Andy Thorne is having none of it. Brexit, according to the straight-talking, leave-voting boss of shipping company Kestrel Liner Agencies, has not been a burden. It’s been nothing short of a “phenomenal gift”.Commonwealth countries, including Guyana in South America and Saint Vincent in the Caribbean, have become thriving markets for Kestrel since Brexit. Thorne puts this down to a greater willingness from the government to finance projects in the Commonwealth post-Brexit. “We are involved in projects that are going to mean more than £500 million of business for British companies,” said Thorne, who shows little sympathy to his peers who were so dependent on EU trade.“If you’ve only ever sold to Europe and suddenly you’ve got to do these customs documents, you can make all the excuses about why it’s difficult. But I need to tell you something … If your business fails to export or import because of a charge of £20 or £50, you probably didn’t have the right business in the first place.”Thorne, 60, is the founder and chief executive of Kestrel, a shipping and freight operation based in Grays, Essex. With pre-tax profits of £12 million on sales of £110 million in the year to April 2024, its thirtieth year in business, Kestrel specialises in moving large and specialist equipment overseas, including wind turbines, fire engines and excavators.Kestrel collected a King’s Award for Enterprise this year — it had already won three Queen’s Awards in the same category — in recognition of the firm’s export success. Like King Charles, Thorne has a passion for philanthropy and for the Commonwealth, which, he believes, represents fertile ground for expansion in a post-Brexit world. Thorne, to put it mildly, does not miss life in the European Union.“When we were part of the EU, we put money in and the EU decided where that money went. I remember being very frustrated watching a bridge being built between Spain and Portugal that was EU funded and the contractor was Brazilian. This is our money, our taxpayers’ money, being given to a Brazilian company.”
Thorne left school in 1980, at 16, with no qualifications — just warnings that the best he could hope for was to be a “bricklayer or a hod carrier”. But his first job, as a runner at Tilbury Docks, was a dream come true for Thorne, who was taught to sail by his stepfather. He earned £24 a week.His hard work was rewarded by a trip to the Caribbean when he was 18, to help track down some containers that had gone missing. A succession of industry jobs helped him hone his skills, and he specialised in trade with the Caribbean and Latin America. In 1993, Thorne joined a private shipping company where he and a colleague, Mark Pattison, “worked day and night” to help their division turn a £500,000 profit, he claimed. Thorne and Pattison, who were paid salaries of £20,000, were hoping for a £10,000 bonus each. Instead, they were both offered a turkey and a ham. “I made the decision at that time that my position was untenable,” said Thorne.The two men had already decided to strike up in business themselves when Pattison, “rather flippantly”, tossed over a newspaper article to his friend. “Some crazy Ecuadorians had bought five brand new state-of-the-art ships, which could do this thing called controlled atmosphere,” Thorne explained. “[It was] where you could bring fruit from South America, but it goes in the vessel on the days it’s picked and the fruit doesn’t ripen. When I grew up, satsumas came out at Christmas and strawberries came out in June. After 1994, it was all year round.”Thorne inquired about becoming the agent for the new ships, but Noboa, the Ecuadorian owners, told him they had promised the work to someone else. “I said, ‘Have you actually signed the contract?’ They said ‘no’, so I said, ‘Please see me before you do.’ ” His persistence paid off. “Suddenly, this kid, 29 years old, had just been given control of $125 million worth of brand new ships.” There was just one problem: Thorne and Pattison didn’t have any money. Thorne, who had a £105,000 mortgage on a house worth £120,000, took out a £5,000 bank loan, supposedly for a car, at an interest rate of 32.9 per cent. “It was worth every frickin’ penny,” he grinned. Pattison’s mother also lent them £20,000 as a safety net in case cash got tight. As it turned out, they never needed it. In the first year, they made a £180,000 profit, paid themselves £60,000 each and kept the rest in the bank to fuel further expansion.
It had been a time of change in Thorne’s personal life, too. Three months after he started Kestrel, in April 1994, his wife told him she was pregnant. And three months after that, they discovered they were expecting twins — a boy and a girl.Becoming a father to twins at a time when he was trying to get his business off the ground meant Thorne struggled to keep both plates spinning.When his children were three months old, the family moved to Trinidad and Tobago for a few years, while Thorne grew the business there. However, the strain of running Kestrel took its toll on the couple’s marriage and they divorced when the twins were nine. “It was just about the most difficult time of my life.”He met Nicki, his second wife, in 2005, and he credits her as being key to Kestrel’s more recent success, including clinching those four awards for enterprise — in 2010, 2018 and 2022.Thorne, who is dyslexic, had applied for the accolade before, but always been rebuffed. “What we were doing for British business, and putting exporters and importers in business together, was exceptional — but I couldn’t articulate it.” With Nicki’s help, Kestrel changed all that.It came after a turbulent period for the business. In 2008, Kestrel was faced with a “catastrophic situation” when a key client went bust in the wake of the global financial crisis, leaving Thorne with significant unpaid debts. He remembers heading to see the bank manager to ask for a loan of £500,000, secured against the family home, when Nicki said to him: “ ‘If it goes wrong today and I end up in a muddy field — with my dog, my horse, in a mobile home with my husband by my side — I will be a happy and content wife.’ In that moment, you’re Muhammad Ali; there’s nothing you can’t do. You’re all guns blazing.” Thorne got the loan.But fast-forward to 2020 and the pandemic presented a whole new set of challenges. Thorne, who took a £1 million CBILs loan, is full of praise for then chancellor Rishi Sunak. “He should have stuck to what he was good at [instead of becoming prime minister] because he was a phenomenal chancellor. The Covid loans, the furlough scheme, they took massive pressure off us and enabled us to grow.” And growth did come: as furloughed workers sat at home buying goods online, ecommerce boomed and “world trade exploded”, said Thorne. As demand took off, containers became harder to come by. The price of shipping a container of goods from China to Europe rose from $3,000 in May 2020 to $18,000 by the end of the year, he recalled. During the pandemic, he went through Kestrel’s costs with a fine-toothed comb, with the result that even though container prices settled down, the company became more profitable than ever. The exercise even led Thorne to uncover a thief. The former employee, who stole £300,000 from Kestrel, was jailed for three years. These days, Kestrel is a family affair: Pattison has retired and Thorne’s children have joined their father in the business. And it’s not just about making money now, either. Thorne talks with pride about the work Kestrel has done supporting communities affected by natural disasters such as Hurricane Irma, which tore through the Caribbean in 2017. “I’m not there right at the beginning, because that’s what [the charities] do — people need a tent, they need medical equipment and food. But then what? They need to rebuild, they need excavators, trucks, machinery and building materials. We are always involved in that.”
My hero … Rick Murrell, who built Florida-based Tropical Shipping. He has been everything to me — a mentor, a big brother, the most honourable and decent human being I have ever known.My best decision … to have a flat management structure. It’s imperative that people, from the bottom to the top, have an equal say. Good ideas can come from anywhere.My worst decision … to invest £300,000 of my own money in 2007 to create hybrid lights that could be powered either by a solar panel and a wind turbine. I didn’t understand patents and it was too easily copied.Funniest moment … in the early years, a major shipping line asked if we would consider selling to them. They all arrived at our office and we showed them our management accounts. They looked through them and then the finance director said, rather matter of factly: “I don’t know how to tell you this, but you each earn more than we all do put together. We won’t be buying you.” The lunch that followed was very awkward.Best business tip … even if people won’t like the news you’re going to give them, honesty is always the best policy.