BIFA were delighted to welcome Collin Singer, Managing Director of Wagtail UK to their Young Forwarder Network last week.

Headquartered in North Wales, Wagtail UK provides detection dogs and related services for government agencies such as UK Border Force, HM Revenue & Customs, Police, Trading Standards and Armed Forces. 

Collin shared his career journey, which started off in the Royal Air Force Police as a Dog handler. After 24 years serving across the UK, Europe and the Falklands, he went on to establish Wagtail in 2003. Fast-forward 19 years and Wagtail has grown to team of 80 people and 150 detection dogs.

During the session Collin explained the range of items that his team are trained to identify as well as the range of breeds that are best suited for the role of a detection dog.

It was fascinating to understand the scale of their previous discoveries, especially within points of entry in the UK, which, if left undetected,  would have had significant impacts on our industry.

It was equally interesting to learn how Wagtail's detection dogs support the air and sea cargo sectors in particular; from detecting explosives in warehouses to identifying trafficked humans in trucks at port level. 

Wagtail's hard work has not gone unnoticed; the team have featured in many TV appearances in recent years. 

BIFA would like to thank Collin for showcasing the work of him and his team to our network. It's clearly a career path that's been extremely rewarding and could perhaps be an area of the industry that our network have had limited knowledge of previously. 

Thank you to the following YFN Committee members who helped facilitate this session: Laura Hobby, Thomas Low, Chloe Melloy and Raman Khurana.

The next BIFA Young Forwarder Network event takes place on Thursday 10th February featuring a virtual port tour of London Gateway.

Please visit the event page HERE to register your attendance.