The moment Fredrik Brändén and Irina Coman met for the first time.
Shipping & Transport 24 May 2022
The Two Yes Sayers
Irina Coman and Fredrik Brändén have handled the shipping back and forth between Sweden and Romania for several years. For our two freight forwarders, there have been a lot of quick conversations, creative solutions and bed of roses transports. We just had to capture the moment when they met for the first time. And ask: how they work.
Between Focșani and Gothenburg, there are 2508 well-run kilometers, a route that has become one of InterEast’s most definite ones. Whose asphalt was both an embryo and a springboard for our company’s growth and journey. From here, the important Romanian trading city, Irina Coman has secured both imports and exports on our behalf for almost ten years now.
– No matter what we encounter, sometimes it doesn’t go as we like, but regardless of the challenge, we seek solutions, together. We have a mentality that wants to take on the ‘hard’ and difficult tasks. The easiest thing there is, is to say no and within the opposite lies the possibilities, says Irina.
On the other side of the screen, the handset and the freight train are Fredrik Brändén, whom during his education did both his freight forwarding internships at InterEast’s Gothenburg office. And stayed.
Romanians keep their promises. If there is a problem, they do everything to try to solve it. Irina is a prime example of that. She has saved me many times, and I her.
– We are convinced that the local presence helps the customer. In addition, we know every single lamppost our drivers pass during the journey. Of course, we also know the drivers and know the cars’ rig plates by heart. There may be a puncture, a miss in a load and everything in between, but the most sensitive part of the entire transport chain is still the ferry departures. The ferry leaves when the ferry leaves and then it is important to have an ace up your sleeve. My ace is the 22.10 ferry – it is always booked, says Fredrik and adds:
– Romanians keep their promises. If there is a problem, they do everything to try to solve it. Irina is a prime example of that. She has saved me many times, and I her.
Experts today – experts tomorrow
This year InterEast celebrate 30 years as the trading expert challenger. Right from the get-go, we have put great emphasis on the saying: actions speak louder than words. Throughout those years, the Focșani-Gothenburg relationship has laid the foundation for how transport should work time and time again like a clockwork. With the highest possible precision.
– To be able to tackle the “impossible”, you must have made a couple of mistakes. To be able to tackle the “impossible” again, you must have learned from those mistakes, says Irina and Fredrik fill in:
– If we promise that your transport will arrive on a certain day, then we will keep that time.
As we now enter our fourth decade as a logistics (tech) company, we see what was important then and what is important today. Delivery and information precision was important then, and is now. Then the contact was over phone calls and faxes, now also just a few clicks away. The word sustainable has become increasingly multifaceted and digitalization has become the universal language that gives us the answers and more accurate metrics. Here and now, we take big digital steps (read more about Elise here) and we can thus focus even more on what will always be important, the delivery of personal contact and quality in its most precise form.
Irina Coman, Salex Executive at InterEast Romania.