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''Two kitchen tables and some chairs - the equipment of the new office was still missing - were sufficient to the first flight of the eagle Columbia. Even the name it carries is a breaking mark with past: once used to celebrate the space shuttle, it is now used to create a new market challenge."

"Being a shipping agent means having to face day by day new problems: to deal in shipping involves the capability to manage any events. It is an hard job and nevertheless it seems so attractive to me even after so many years I've been involved in it & At last, the charming idea was to have the chance to create something new in a sector where one never stops learning."
These words appeared in the 1987 issue of the magazine Aziende e Dintorni, used by Mr. Pietro Barberini to describe Columbia Transport that was then five years old. Time flows so quickly, next year Columbia will be twenty-five years old and Mrs. Rosanna Bacchilega, the founder and managing director of the company, is going to celebrate like she did in past for the twenty years anniversary.
Columbia Transport S.r.l. was created in 1982 on December 30th as a result of a thirty-year experience in Freight Forwarding of its founding partners. The office never moved from the centre of Ravenna, where it is in Via Matteotti 31. The staff has been increased from two employees to ten, all of them with a widespread competence, English speaking, among them some have been working here since the foundation.
At the beginning Columbia Transport offered clients a service to Israel, loading its cargo on Borchard Line vessels, at the end of the first year the allotment allowed resulted clearly insufficient and this made necessary to make agreements with other shipping lines in order to load all the containers booked and drawn week by week. In 1985 a second company was formed and managed by Mr. Emilio Ciliento: it is C.S.R. (Centro Spedizioni Ravenna S.r.l.) intended to offer Columbia the best service as far as all customs operations are concerned.
In 1986 Columbia Transport started new partnerships with some agents in Piraeus so that its service includes since then shipping containers to Greece with 'door to door' deliveries. This is a branch of business that strongly increased as Greece took part in the European Community.

In 1996, thanks to the arrival in Ravenna of M.S.C. (Mediterranean Shipping Company S.A. of Geneva) Columbia Transport could make a big and long awaited step forward, taking advantage of the services of a world leading company. Collaboration with MSC makes the management of wordwide shipping highly efficient and very dynamic.
In 1998 Columbia Transport holds the Quality System Certification issued by S.G.S. ICS S.r.l. with clients' satisfaction. The Columbia Transport Quality Assurance system complies with UNI-EN-ISO 9001.

Columbia's success lies in a mix of competence and effeciency, and without suffering the sectorial crisis, it has become a name of high credit among the many Forwarding Agents dealing in Ravenna.

To conquer such a reputation has been quite an ambitious target!