Lighthouse Agencies Pty Ltd (“Lighthouse”) was established at the beginning of 1990. It was then, and has always remained, a licenced Customs Brokerage and, in keeping with the continual change within the international trade landscape, has since acquired accredited brokerage status with the quarantine arm of the Department of Agriculture, Water & the Environment (“DAWE”) known as DAWE Biosecurity.
Lighthouse is able to provide a range of import and export related services, including ABF (Australian Border Force, formerly Australian Customs and Border Protection Service) and DAWE Biosecurity clearance services in all ports in Australia, delivery of cargo once it has been cleared through ABF and DAWE Biosecurity, specialised customs, DAWE Biosecurity, or trade advice and related services, and international freight broking services both import and export.
Lighthouse has been involved in projects with companies across a wide range of industries, including mining and minerals exploration and extraction, computing and telecommunications, food processing, the entertainment industry (on the manufacturing side), textiles, earthmoving and agricultural machinery, boating and aircraft. Some of the companies with which Lighthouse has worked are very well known names, such as IBM, Digital Equipment Corp, Compaq, Hewlett Packard, Sony, South Blackwater Coal (a division of QCT Resources Ltd), Oakbridge Pty Ltd, Oceanic Coal Pty Ltd, Powercoal Pty Ltd, OMC Pty Ltd, Iveco Trucks, as well as many smaller organisations without the public profile of these major corporations.
Lighthouse also has a strong focus on servicing the needs of the micro & small to medium size business community, as well as attending to the needs of private individuals. We aim to provide assistance to the best of our abilities and expertise and we quite often take on work that others feel is not worthy of their time.
Evidence of the level of expertise and the high regard with which Lighthouse is held within the Customs Broking community can be found in the fact that Lighthouse also provides consulting and temporary staffing assistance to other Customs Brokers. Lighthouse has also provided support services to the indirect tax divisions of major accounting firms, such as KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. It could be said that Lighthouse is the “broker’s brokerage”, the one that others turn to when they need expertise they don’t have in-house.
Mr Ian Hosking, a founder of Lighthouse, has more than forty years’ experience in the customs and international freight field. He views Lighthouse as not merely a service provider to the company’s customers, rather he sees Lighthouse as a business partner whose aim is to add value to the business of the customers of Lighthouse. The businesses of Lighthouse’s customers are as important to the management and staff of Lighthouse as they are to the management and staff of those customers. His view is that Lighthouse can only be successful if its clients are successful.
Mr Hosking commenced working in the industry at Sydney Kingsford-Smith Airport as an airfreight clerk for a major European based multi-national freight forwarder and customs clearance broker. He progressed through the ranks with this company whilst undertaking tertiary studies to achieve professional qualifications as a licenced Customs Broker and in management studies. During his tenure with this organisation, Mr Hosking spent 3 and a half years running the Brisbane customs clearance division and then returned to the head office in Sydney to manage the customs clearance division there. He resigned from this position some years later to take up a position in Sydney as National Customs Manager with another, somewhat larger, European based multi-national freight forwarding and customs clearance group. A short time later the opportunity arose for Mr Hosking to establish his own customs clearance brokerage, Lighthouse Agencies Pty Ltd.
During his career, Mr Hosking has also contributed to the industry by serving several terms on the board of management of the Customs Agents Institute of Australia (“CAIA”), a predecessor professional body to the Customs Brokers and Forwarders Council of Australia (“CBFCA”) (on 1 July 2020 the CBFCA merged with the Australian Federation of International Forwarders (“AFIF”) to form a new body titled the International Forwarders & Customs Brokers Association of Australia (“IFCBAA”). Primarily involved in educational matters, Mr Hosking served a term as Education Director for the NSW Division of the CAIA. It was during this term that the current systems of national educational and licencing examination standards for Customs brokers were developed and introduced, with the co-operation of the then Australian Customs Service (now the Australian Border Force). Mr Hosking worked on the committee responsible for setting up the national standards, as well as working on subsequent committees established to set and review national examination papers, and to mark the papers after each examination.
Mr Hosking currently holds the status of “Fellow” in the IFCBAA, the second highest status that can be awarded to members of the IFCBAA (the highest being Life Membership, awarded to only a few individuals in the history of the IFCBAA and its preceding organisations).
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