Burnard International Freight Services was formed in 1982 as a Customs Agency by partners, Barry Burnard, Roy Reynolds and Greg Hoffman. The company started with two Auckland offices, a city office for sea-freight, in Nagel House, Courthouse Lane and an air-freight office in the AFCAB building at Auckland Airport.
Burnards' first employee was Hamish Milne 'the boy', who today passionately works in the business as one of our three company Directors.
The company's prime function in the 80's was Customs Clearance in a time of high import duties, sales tax and import licencing. The function was very manual as computers had not yet arrived. The payment of duty and tax was done in person at the Customs counter by cheque and urgent overseas communication was done by telex machine, complete with operator.
The 90’s were embraced by Burnard International as an opportunity to establish our position in a competitive market. With this in mind in 1990 Burnard International relocated our office to a small warehouse unit in the new Airport Oaks.
1992, Donna McErlane joined the business as a Customs Agent and is now one of the three current Directors of Burnard International.
1993, after the advent of the computer age in our industry, we combined both offices into one Airport Oaks location. We also identified this as an opportune time to establish an office in Wellington.
1995, saw the retirement of the founding Director Barry Burnard, after a long career in the industry, as firstly a Customs Officer and then a Customs Agent.
Into the new millennium where in 2005 we opened a new office in Tauranga.
2009 the Auckland office relocated to our current home in Rennie Drive.
2015 we established our first South Island office based in Christchurch.
From our humble beginnings, today we employ over 80 passionate staff, based in four strategic locations to service all your international freight needs.
